* NEWS (New targets): Add entry for TI MSP430.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
6 * Python scripting
7
8 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
9
10 * New targets
11
12 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
13 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
14 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
15
16 * New commands:
17 catch rethrow
18 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
19 maint check-psymtabs
20 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
21 maint check-symtabs
22 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
23 maint expand-symtabs
24 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
25
26 show configuration
27 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
28
29 maint set|show per-command
30 maint set|show per-command space
31 maint set|show per-command time
32 maint set|show per-command symtab
33 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
34
35 * New options
36
37 set remote trace-status-packet
38 show remote trace-status-packet
39 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
40
41 set debug nios2
42 show debug nios2
43 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
44
45 set range-stepping
46 show range-stepping
47 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
48
49 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
50 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
51 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
52 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
53 "set height 0".
54
55 * New command-line options
56 --configuration
57 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
58
59 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
60 buffer in Common Trace Format.
61
62 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
63 GDB command gcore.
64
65 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
66
67 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
68 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
69
70 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
71 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
72
73 * MI changes
74
75 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
76 Trace Format now.
77
78 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
79
80 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
81 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
82 are displayed.
83
84 * New system-wide configuration scripts
85 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
86 configuration scripts for the following systems:
87 ** ElinOS
88 ** Wind River Linux
89
90 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
91 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
92 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
93 below.
94
95 * New remote packets
96
97 vCont;r
98
99 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
100 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
101 involvemement at each single-step.
102
103 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
104 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
105 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
106 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
107 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
108 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
109 speedup.
110
111 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
112
113 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
114 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
115
116 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
117
118 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
119 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
120 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
121 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
122
123 set|show record full insn-number-max
124 set|show record full stop-at-limit
125 set|show record full memory-query
126
127 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
128 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
129 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
130 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
131 This new recording method can be enabled using:
132
133 record btrace
134
135 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
136 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
137
138 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
139 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
140 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
141
142 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
143 instruction granularity
144
145 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
146 function granularity
147
148 * New native configurations
149
150 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
151 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
152 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
153 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
154
155 * New targets
156
157 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
158 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
159 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
160 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
161 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
162
163 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
164 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
165 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
166 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
167 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
168 --data-directory command-line option.
169
170 * New command line options:
171
172 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
173 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
174
175 * Removed command line options
176
177 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
178 Emacs.
179
180 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
181 type formatting.
182
183 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
184
185 * Python scripting
186
187 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
188
189 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
190
191 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
192
193 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
194
195 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
196 of architecture in the Python API.
197
198 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
199 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
200
201 * New Python-based convenience functions:
202
203 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
204 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
205 ** $_strlen(str)
206 ** $_regex(str, regex)
207
208 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
209 given an argument.
210
211 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
212 default for GCC since November 2000.
213
214 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
215
216 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
217 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
218
219 * New configure options
220
221 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
222 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
223 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
224 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
225 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
226 options allow the user to override that default.
227 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
228 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
229 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
230
231 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
232
233 catch signal
234 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
235 conditions to be attached.
236
237 maint info bfds
238 List the BFDs known to GDB.
239
240 python-interactive [command]
241 pi [command]
242 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
243 and print the result of expressions.
244
245 py [command]
246 "py" is a new alias for "python".
247
248 enable type-printer [name]...
249 disable type-printer [name]...
250 Enable or disable type printers.
251
252 * Removed commands
253
254 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
255 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
256 instead.
257
258 * New options
259
260 set print type methods (on|off)
261 show print type methods
262 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
263 The default is to show them.
264
265 set print type typedefs (on|off)
266 show print type typedefs
267 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
268 The default is to show them.
269
270 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
271 show filename-display
272 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
273 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
274
275 set trace-buffer-size
276 show trace-buffer-size
277 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
278
279 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
280 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
281 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
282
283 set debug aarch64
284 show debug aarch64
285 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
286 The default is off.
287
288 set debug coff-pe-read
289 show debug coff-pe-read
290 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
291 exported symbols.
292
293 set debug mach-o
294 show debug mach-o
295 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
296 processing.
297
298 set debug notification
299 show debug notification
300 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
301
302 * MI changes
303
304 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
305 "=cmd-param-changed".
306 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
307 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
308 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
309 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
310 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
311 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
312 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
313 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
314 "=memory-changed".
315 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
316 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
317 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
318 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
319 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
320 library load/unload events.
321 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
322 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
323 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
324 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
325 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
326 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
327 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
328 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
329
330 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
331 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
332 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
333 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
334
335 * New remote packets
336
337 QTBuffer:size
338 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
339 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
340
341 Qbtrace:bts
342 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
343 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
344 qSupported query.
345
346 Qbtrace:off
347 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
348 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
349
350 qXfer:btrace:read
351 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
352 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
353
354 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
355
356 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
357 for more x32 ABI info.
358
359 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
360
361 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
362
363 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
364 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
365 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
366 "info os files" lists file descriptors
367 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
368 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
369 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
370 "info os msg" lists message queues
371 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
372
373 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
374 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
375 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
376 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
377 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
378 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
379
380 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
381 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
382 record/replay support.
383
384 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
385
386 * Python scripting
387
388 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
389 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
390
391 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
392
393 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
394 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
395
396 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
397
398 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
399 the source at which the symbol was defined.
400
401 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
402 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
403 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
404 symbol's value.
405
406 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
407 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
408
409 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
410 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
411 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
412
413 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
414 object associated with a PC value.
415
416 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
417 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
418
419 * Go language support.
420 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
421 language.
422
423 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
424 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
425
426 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
427 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
428
429 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
430 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
431 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
432 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
433 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
434 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
435
436 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
437 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
438 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
439 build/libcpp/expr.c.
440
441 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
442 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
443
444 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
445 since December 2007.
446
447 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
448 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
449 command does. For instance:
450
451 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
452
453 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
454 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
455 created, using the "condition" command.
456
457 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
458 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
459
460 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
461
462 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
463 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
464 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
465 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
466 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
467 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
468 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
469 files with older .gdb_index sections.
470
471 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
472 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
473 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
474 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
475 the .gdb_index section.
476
477 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
478
479 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
480 target.
481
482 * MI changes
483
484 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
485
486 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
487
488 * New commands
489
490 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
491 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
492 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
493
494 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
495 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
496
497 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
498 several hits.
499
500 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
501 C++ and Java objects.
502
503 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
504 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
505 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
506 configured with '--with-python'.
507
508 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
509 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
510 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
511 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
512 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
513 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
514 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
515
516 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
517 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
518 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
519 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
520
521 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
522 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
523 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
524 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
525
526 ** "set print symbol"
527 "show print symbol"
528 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
529 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
530 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
531
532 * Deprecated commands
533
534 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
535 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
536
537 * New targets
538
539 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
540 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
541
542 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
543 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
544 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
545 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
546 evaluates to true.
547
548 * New options
549
550 set mips compression
551 show mips compression
552 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
553 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
554 mips16
555 micromips
556 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
557
558 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
559 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
560 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
561 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
562 available mode.
563 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
564 target.
565
566 set auto-load off
567 Disable auto-loading globally.
568
569 show auto-load
570 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
571
572 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
573 show auto-load gdb-scripts
574 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
575
576 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
577 show auto-load python-scripts
578 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
579
580 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
581 show auto-load local-gdbinit
582 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
583
584 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
585 show auto-load libthread-db
586 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
587
588 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
589 show auto-load scripts-directory
590 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
591 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
592 of the directories listed by this option.
593 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
594
595 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
596 show auto-load safe-path
597 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
598 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
599
600 set debug auto-load on|off
601 show debug auto-load
602 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
603
604 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
605 show dprintf-style
606 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
607 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
608 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
609 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
610
611 set dprintf-function <expr>
612 show dprintf-function
613 set dprintf-channel <expr>
614 show dprintf-channel
615 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
616 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
617
618 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
619 show disconnected-dprintf
620 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
621 after GDB disconnects.
622
623 * New configure options
624
625 --with-auto-load-dir
626 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
627 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
628 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
629 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
630 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
631
632 --with-auto-load-safe-path
633 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
634 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
635
636 --without-auto-load-safe-path
637 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
638 security feature.
639
640 * New remote packets
641
642 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
643
644 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
645 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
646 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
647 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
648
649 QProgramSignals:
650
651 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
652 program without GDB involvement.
653
654 * New command line options
655
656 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
657 before loading inferior.
658 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
659 execute it before loading inferior.
660
661 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
662
663 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
664 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
665 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
666 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
667 inferior changes.
668
669 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
670 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
671
672 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
673 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
674 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
675 target hardware watchpoint.
676
677 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
678 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
679 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
680 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
681
682 * Python scripting
683
684 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
685 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
686 existing one.
687
688 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
689 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
690 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
691 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
692 now "message", which just prints the error message without
693 the stack trace.
694
695 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
696 Python API.
697
698 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
699 modules library. This module provides functionality for
700 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
701 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
702 corresponding value.
703
704 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
705 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
706 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
707 on GDB start-up.
708
709 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
710 static_block will return the global and static blocks
711 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
712 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
713
714 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
715
716 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
717 "gdb.breakpoints".
718
719 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
720 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
721 available in the CLI.
722
723 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
724 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
725 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
726 "some_type.items()".
727
728 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
729 new object file.
730
731 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
732 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
733 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
734 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
735 any anonymous fields.
736
737 * MI changes
738
739 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
740 "solib-event".
741
742 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
743 "=breakpoint-modified".
744
745 ** New command -ada-task-info.
746
747 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
748 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
749 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
750 lives.
751
752 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
753 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
754 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
755 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
756 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
757
758 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
759 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
760
761 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
762 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
763 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
764 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
765 use this option to specify where to find it.
766
767 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
768 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
769 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
770 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
771 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
772 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
773 section in the user manual for more details.
774
775 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
776 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
777 become available after that.
778
779 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
780
781 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
782 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
783 gcc version 4.7.
784
785 * New commands
786
787 !SHELL COMMAND
788 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
789 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
790
791 * Changed commands
792
793 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
794 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
795 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
796
797 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
798 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
799 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
800
801 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
802 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
803 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
804 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
805 name starts with a hyphen.
806
807 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
808 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
809 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
810 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
811 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
812 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
813 number of bytes that will be collected.
814
815 tstart [NOTES]
816 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
817 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
818 setting the variable trace-notes.
819
820 tstop [NOTES]
821 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
822 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
823 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
824 trace-stop-notes.
825
826 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
827 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
828 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
829 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
830 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
831 is running.
832
833 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
834 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
835 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
836
837 * New options
838
839 set debug dwarf2-read
840 show debug dwarf2-read
841 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
842 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
843
844 set debug symtab-create
845 show debug symtab-create
846 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
847 creation. The default is off.
848
849 set extended-prompt
850 show extended-prompt
851 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
852 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
853 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
854 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
855 prompt is displayed.
856
857 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
858 show print entry-values
859 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
860 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
861 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
862
863 set debug entry-values
864 show debug entry-values
865 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
866 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
867
868 set basenames-may-differ
869 show basenames-may-differ
870 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
871 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
872 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
873 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
874 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
875 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
876 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
877 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
878
879 set trace-user
880 show trace-user
881 set trace-notes
882 show trace-notes
883 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
884 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
885 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
886 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
887
888 set trace-stop-notes
889 show trace-stop-notes
890 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
891 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
892 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
893 started by someone else.
894
895 * New remote packets
896
897 QTEnable
898
899 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
900
901 QTDisable
902
903 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
904
905 QTNotes
906
907 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
908
909 qTP
910
911 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
912
913 qTMinFTPILen
914
915 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
916 be placed.
917
918 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
919 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
920
921 * New targets
922
923 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
924
925 * New Simulators
926
927 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
928
929 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
930
931 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
932
933 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
934
935 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
936 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
937 matches the given regular expression.
938
939 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
940
941 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
942 dumping the instruction opcodes.
943
944 * New command line options
945
946 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
947 This is mostly for testing purposes.
948
949 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
950 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
951
952 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
953 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
954 source path list instead of augmenting it.
955
956 * GDB now understands thread names.
957
958 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
959 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
960
961 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
962 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
963
964 * OpenCL C
965 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
966 has been integrated into GDB.
967
968 * Python scripting
969
970 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
971 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
972 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
973
974 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
975 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
976 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
977 and allows for more dynamic content.
978
979 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
980 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
981 have an is_valid method.
982
983 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
984 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
985 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
986
987 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
988
989 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
990 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
991 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
992 that function like so:
993
994 result = some_value (10,20)
995
996 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
997 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
998 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
999
1000 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1001 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1002 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1003 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1004 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1005
1006 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1007 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1008
1009 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1010
1011 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1012 selected thread.
1013
1014 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1015 holds the thread's name.
1016
1017 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1018 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1019 occurring in the process being debugged.
1020 The following events are currently supported:
1021 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1022 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1023 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1024
1025 * C++ Improvements:
1026
1027 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1028 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1029
1030 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1031
1032 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1033 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1034 was added to GCC 4.5.
1035
1036 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1037 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1038 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1039 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1040 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1041 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1042
1043 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1044 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1045 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1046 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1047 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1048
1049 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1050 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1051 execution to a label.
1052
1053 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1054 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1055 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1056 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1057
1058 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1059 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1060 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1061 of scope.
1062
1063 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1064
1065 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1066 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1067 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1068 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1069 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1070 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1071
1072 (gdb) info threads
1073 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1074
1075 While now you see this:
1076
1077 (gdb) info threads
1078 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1079
1080 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1081 dumps.
1082
1083 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1084 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1085 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1086 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1087
1088 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1089 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1090 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1091 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1092 section in the user manual for more details.
1093
1094 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1095
1096 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1097 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1098
1099 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1100
1101 * New native configurations
1102
1103 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1104
1105 * New targets:
1106
1107 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1108
1109 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1110 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1111 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1112 in the GDB user manual.
1113
1114 * Guile support was removed.
1115
1116 * New features in the GNU simulator
1117
1118 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1119
1120 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1121
1122 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1123
1124 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1125
1126 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1127 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1128 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1129 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1130 was always disabled for such configurations.
1131
1132 * C++ Improvements:
1133
1134 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1135
1136 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1137 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1138 For example:
1139 namespace A
1140 {
1141 class B { };
1142 void foo (B) { }
1143 }
1144 ...
1145 A::B b
1146 foo(b)
1147 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1148 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1149 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1150
1151 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1152
1153 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1154 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1155 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1156 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1157 entry.
1158 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1159 mentioned flavors of operators.
1160
1161 ** static const class members
1162
1163 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1164 class definition has been fixed.
1165
1166 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1167
1168 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1169 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1170 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1171 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1172 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1173 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1174
1175 * Static tracepoints
1176
1177 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1178 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1179 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1180 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1181 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1182 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1183 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1184 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1185 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1186 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1187 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1188 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1189 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1190 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1191 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1192 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1193 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1194 the "New remote packets" section below.
1195
1196 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1197
1198 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1199 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1200 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1201 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1202
1203 * Observer mode
1204
1205 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1206 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1207 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1208 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1209 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1210 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1211 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1212
1213 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1214 current thread.
1215
1216 * New remote packets
1217
1218 qGetTIBAddr
1219
1220 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1221
1222 qRelocInsn
1223
1224 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1225 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1226 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1227 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1228 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1229 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1230
1231 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1232
1233 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1234
1235 qTSTMat
1236
1237 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1238 program.
1239
1240 qXfer:statictrace:read
1241
1242 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1243 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1244 to gdb's qSupported query.
1245
1246 QAllow
1247
1248 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1249
1250 QTDPsrc
1251
1252 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1253 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1254
1255 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1256 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1257 a directory.
1258
1259 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1260
1261 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1262 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1263 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1264 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1265
1266 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1267 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1268 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1269 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1270 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1271 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1272 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1273
1274 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1275 for static tracepoints support.
1276
1277 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1278
1279 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1280 it understands register description.
1281
1282 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1283
1284 * X86 general purpose registers
1285
1286 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1287 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1288 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1289 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1290 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1291
1292 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1293 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1294 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1295 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1296 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1297 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1298
1299 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1300 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1301 in the specified file.
1302
1303 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1304 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1305 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1306 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1307 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1308 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1309 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1310 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1311 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1312 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1313
1314 * New commands
1315
1316 eval template, expressions...
1317 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1318 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1319
1320 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1321 show target-file-system-kind
1322 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1323 names.
1324
1325 save breakpoints <filename>
1326 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1327 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1328 definitions, use the `source' command.
1329
1330 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1331 is now deprecated.
1332
1333 info static-tracepoint-markers
1334 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1335
1336 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1337 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1338 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1339
1340 set observer on|off
1341 show observer
1342 Enable and disable observer mode.
1343
1344 set may-write-registers on|off
1345 set may-write-memory on|off
1346 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1347 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1348 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1349 set may-interrupt on|off
1350 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1351 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1352 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1353 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1354 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1355 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1356 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1357
1358 set record memory-query on|off
1359 show record memory-query
1360 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1361 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1362
1363 * Changed commands
1364
1365 disassemble
1366 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1367
1368 * Python scripting
1369
1370 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1371 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1372 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1373 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1374 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1375
1376 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1377 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1378 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1379 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1380
1381 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1382 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1383
1384 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1385
1386 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1387
1388 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1389
1390 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1391 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1392 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1393
1394 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1395 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1396 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1397 regular breakpoints.
1398
1399 * New targets
1400
1401 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1402
1403 * D language support.
1404 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1405 language.
1406
1407 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1408 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1409 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1410 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1411 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1412
1413 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1414 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1415 conditions of the form:
1416
1417 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1418
1419 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1420 interface mentioned above.
1421
1422 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1423
1424 * C++ Improvements
1425
1426 ** Namespace Support
1427
1428 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1429 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1430 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1431 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1432 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1433
1434 ** Bug Fixes
1435
1436 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1437 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1438 qualified name.
1439
1440 ** Cast Operators
1441
1442 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1443 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1444
1445 * New targets
1446
1447 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1448 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
1449
1450 * New Simulators
1451
1452 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1453 Renesas RX rx
1454
1455 * Multi-program debugging.
1456
1457 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1458 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1459 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1460 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1461 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1462 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1463 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1464 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1465
1466 * New tracing features
1467
1468 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1469
1470 ** Trace state variables
1471
1472 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1473 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1474 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1475 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1476 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1477 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1478 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1479 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1480 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1481 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1482
1483 ** Fast tracepoints
1484
1485 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1486 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1487 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1488 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1489 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1490 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1491 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1492 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1493 the regular trace command.
1494
1495 ** Disconnected tracing
1496
1497 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1498 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1499 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1500 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1501 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1502
1503 ** Trace files
1504
1505 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1506 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1507 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1508 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1509 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1510 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1511 <name>".
1512
1513 ** Circular trace buffer
1514
1515 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1516 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1517 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1518 not be available for all target agents.
1519
1520 * Changed commands
1521
1522 disassemble
1523 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1524 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1525
1526 info variables
1527 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1528 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1529
1530 source
1531 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1532 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1533 support.
1534
1535 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1536 "set script-extension" (see below).
1537
1538 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1539
1540 record save [<FILENAME>]
1541 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1542 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1543
1544 record restore <FILENAME>
1545 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1546 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1547
1548 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1549 Add a new inferior.
1550
1551 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1552 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1553 inferior has loaded.
1554
1555 remove-inferior ID
1556 Remove an inferior.
1557
1558 maint info program-spaces
1559 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1560
1561 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1562 show remote interrupt-sequence
1563 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1564 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1565 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1566 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1567 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1568
1569 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1570 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1571 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1572 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1573 Linux kernel.
1574
1575 set remotebreak [on | off]
1576 show remotebreak
1577 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1578
1579 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1580 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1581
1582 info tvariables
1583 List trace state variables and their values.
1584
1585 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1586 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1587
1588 teval EXPR, ...
1589 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1590 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1591
1592 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1593 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1594
1595 * New expression syntax
1596
1597 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1598 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1599
1600 * New options
1601
1602 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1603 show follow-exec-mode
1604 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1605 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1606 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1607
1608 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1609 show default-collect
1610 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1611 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1612 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1613
1614 set disconnected-tracing
1615 show disconnected-tracing
1616 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1617 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1618 upon disconnection.
1619
1620 set circular-trace-buffer
1621 show circular-trace-buffer
1622 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1623 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1624 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1625 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1626
1627 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1628 show script-extension
1629 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1630 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1631 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1632 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1633 evaluation failed.
1634 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1635
1636 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1637 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1638 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1639 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1640 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1641 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1642 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1643 is on.
1644
1645 * Python API Improvements
1646
1647 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1648 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1649 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1650
1651 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1652 `is_base_class' attribute.
1653
1654 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1655
1656 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1657 evaluate an expression.
1658
1659 * New remote packets
1660
1661 QTDV
1662 Define a trace state variable.
1663
1664 qTV
1665 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1666
1667 QTDisconnected
1668 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1669
1670 QTBuffer:circular
1671 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1672
1673 qTfP, qTsP
1674 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1675
1676 * Bug fixes
1677
1678 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1679
1680 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1681 much more reliable. In particular:
1682 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1683 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1684 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1685 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1686 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1687 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1688 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1689 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1690 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1691 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1692 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1693 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1694 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1695 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1696 non-threaded programs.
1697
1698 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1699 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1700 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1701 executable program.
1702
1703 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1704
1705 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1706 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1707 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1708 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1709 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1710
1711 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1712 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1713 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1714 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1715 for tracepoint actions.
1716
1717 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1718 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1719 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1720
1721 * Process record and replay
1722
1723 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1724 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1725 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1726 execute commands.
1727
1728 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1729 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1730 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1731 reverse execution.
1732
1733 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1734 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1735 2.6.28 or later.
1736
1737 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1738 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1739 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1740 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1741 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1742 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1743 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1744 the installation instructions for more information.
1745
1746 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1747 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1748 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1749 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1750
1751 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1752 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1753
1754 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1755 now complete on file names.
1756
1757 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1758 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1759 For instance, consider:
1760
1761 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1762 # struct example variable;
1763 (gdb) p variable.
1764
1765 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1766 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1767
1768 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1769 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1770
1771 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1772 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1773 macros.
1774
1775 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1776 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1777 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1778
1779 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1780 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1781 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1782 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1783
1784 * New remote packets
1785
1786 qSearch:memory:
1787 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1788
1789 QStartNoAckMode
1790 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1791 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1792 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1793
1794 vKill
1795 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1796 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1797
1798 qXfer:osdata:read
1799 Obtains additional operating system information
1800
1801 qXfer:siginfo:read
1802 qXfer:siginfo:write
1803 Read or write additional signal information.
1804
1805 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1806
1807 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1808 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1809 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1810
1811 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1812 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1813
1814 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1815 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1816 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1817
1818 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1819 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1820
1821 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1822
1823 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1824
1825 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1826 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1827
1828 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1829 list of section offsets.
1830
1831 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1832 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1833 have also been fixed.
1834
1835 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1836 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1837 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1838
1839 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1840 example, given:
1841
1842 template<typename T> class C { };
1843 C<char const *> c;
1844
1845 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1846
1847 ptype C<char const *>
1848 ptype C<char const*>
1849 ptype C<const char *>
1850 ptype C<const char*>
1851
1852 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1853
1854 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1855 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1856
1857 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1858 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1859 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1860
1861 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1862 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1863
1864 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1865 gdbserver.
1866
1867 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1868 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1869
1870 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1871 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1872 as appropriate.
1873
1874 * Python scripting
1875
1876 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1877 available is determined at configure time.
1878
1879 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1880
1881 * Ada tasking support
1882
1883 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1884 been introduced:
1885
1886 info tasks
1887 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1888 info task N
1889 Print detailed information about task number N.
1890 task
1891 Print the task number of the current task.
1892 task N
1893 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1894
1895 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1896 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1897
1898 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1899
1900 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1901 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1902 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1903 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1904 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1905 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1906 below.
1907
1908 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1909 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1910 information.
1911
1912 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1913 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1914 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1915 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1916 more information.
1917
1918 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1919
1920 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1921 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1922 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1923 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1924 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1925
1926 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1927 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1928 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1929 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1930 --enable-targets configure option.
1931
1932 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1933
1934 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1935 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1936 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1937 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1938 section in the user manual for more information.
1939
1940 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1941 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1942 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1943 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1944 extensions on linux targets.
1945
1946 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1947
1948 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1949 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1950 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1951 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1952 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1953 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1954 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1955 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1956 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1957
1958 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1959 val1 [, val2, ...]
1960 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1961
1962 maint set python print-stack
1963 maint show python print-stack
1964 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1965
1966 python [CODE]
1967 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1968
1969 macro define
1970 macro list
1971 macro undef
1972 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1973 interactively.
1974
1975 info os processes
1976 Show operating system information about processes.
1977
1978 info inferiors
1979 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1980
1981 inferior NUM
1982 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1983
1984 detach inferior NUM
1985 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1986
1987 kill inferior NUM
1988 Kill inferior number NUM.
1989
1990 * New options
1991
1992 set spu stop-on-load
1993 show spu stop-on-load
1994 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1995
1996 set spu auto-flush-cache
1997 show spu auto-flush-cache
1998 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1999 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2000
2001 set sh calling-convention
2002 show sh calling-convention
2003 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2004
2005 set debug timestamp
2006 show debug timestamp
2007 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2008
2009 set disassemble-next-line
2010 show disassemble-next-line
2011 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2012 the debuggee stops.
2013
2014 set remote noack-packet
2015 show remote noack-packet
2016 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2017 under "New remote packets."
2018
2019 set remote query-attached-packet
2020 show remote query-attached-packet
2021 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2022
2023 set remote read-siginfo-object
2024 show remote read-siginfo-object
2025 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2026 packet.
2027
2028 set remote write-siginfo-object
2029 show remote write-siginfo-object
2030 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2031 packet.
2032
2033 set remote reverse-continue
2034 show remote reverse-continue
2035 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2036
2037 set remote reverse-step
2038 show remote reverse-step
2039 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2040
2041 set displaced-stepping
2042 show displaced-stepping
2043 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2044 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2045 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2046
2047 set debug displaced
2048 show debug displaced
2049 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2050
2051 maint set internal-error
2052 maint show internal-error
2053 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2054
2055 maint set internal-warning
2056 maint show internal-warning
2057 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2058
2059 set exec-wrapper
2060 show exec-wrapper
2061 unset exec-wrapper
2062 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2063
2064 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2065 show multiple-symbols
2066 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2067 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2068 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2069
2070 set breakpoint always-inserted
2071 show breakpoint always-inserted
2072 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2073 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2074 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2075
2076 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2077 show arm fallback-mode
2078 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2079 show arm force-mode
2080 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2081 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2082 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2083 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2084
2085 set disable-randomization
2086 show disable-randomization
2087 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2088 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2089 multiple debugging sessions.
2090
2091 set non-stop
2092 show non-stop
2093 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2094 a breakpoint.
2095
2096 set target-async
2097 show target-async
2098 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2099 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2100 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2101 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2102
2103 set target-wide-charset
2104 show target-wide-charset
2105 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2106 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2107
2108 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2109 show tcp auto-retry
2110 set tcp connect-timeout
2111 show tcp connect-timeout
2112 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2113 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2114 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2115
2116 set libthread-db-search-path
2117 show libthread-db-search-path
2118 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2119 libthread_db.
2120
2121 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2122 show schedule-multiple
2123 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2124 the current process.
2125
2126 set stack-cache
2127 show stack-cache
2128 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2129 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2130 affecting correctness.
2131
2132 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2133 show interactive-mode
2134 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2135 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2136 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2137 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2138 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2139
2140 * Removed commands
2141
2142 info forks
2143 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2144 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2145 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2146 command.
2147
2148 fork NUM
2149 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2150 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2151 alias for the `fork' command.
2152
2153 process PID
2154 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2155 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2156 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2157
2158 delete fork NUM
2159 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2160 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2161 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2162 fork' command.
2163
2164 detach fork NUM
2165 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2166 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2167 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2168 fork' command.
2169
2170 * New native configurations
2171
2172 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2173
2174 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2175
2176 * New targets
2177
2178 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2179 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2180 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2181 S+core 3 score-*-*
2182
2183 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2184 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2185
2186 * Removed commands
2187
2188 catch load
2189 catch unload
2190 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2191
2192 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2193
2194 * New native configurations
2195
2196 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2197 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2198
2199 * New targets
2200
2201 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2202 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2203
2204 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2205
2206 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2207 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2208 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2209 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2210
2211 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2212 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2213
2214 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2215 is resolved.
2216
2217 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2218 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2219 and in inlined functions.
2220
2221 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2222 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2223 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2224
2225 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2226
2227 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2228 registers on PowerPC targets.
2229
2230 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2231 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2232
2233 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2234 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2235
2236 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2237 extended-remote mode.
2238
2239 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2240 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2241 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2242 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2243
2244 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2245 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2246 target architectures.
2247
2248 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2249 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2250 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2251 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2252
2253 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2254 breakpoints now.
2255
2256 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2257 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2258 include:
2259 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2260 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2261 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2262 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2263 of an assignment
2264 - Improved command completion in Ada
2265 - Several bug fixes
2266
2267 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2268 process.
2269
2270 * New commands
2271
2272 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2273 show print frame-arguments
2274 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2275 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2276
2277 remote put
2278 remote get
2279 remote delete
2280 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2281
2282 * New MI commands
2283
2284 -target-file-put
2285 -target-file-get
2286 -target-file-delete
2287 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2288
2289 * New remote packets
2290
2291 vFile:open:
2292 vFile:close:
2293 vFile:pread:
2294 vFile:pwrite:
2295 vFile:unlink:
2296 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2297
2298 vAttach
2299 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2300 mode.
2301
2302 vRun
2303 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2304
2305 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2306
2307 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2308 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2309 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2310
2311 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2312 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2313 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2314
2315 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2316 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2317 is not supported.
2318
2319 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2320 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2321
2322 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2323 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2324
2325 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2326
2327 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2328 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2329 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2330
2331 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2332 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2333
2334 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2335 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2336 as strings.
2337
2338 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2339 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2340 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2341
2342 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2343 iWMMXt coprocessor.
2344
2345 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2346 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2347 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2348
2349 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2350
2351 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2352
2353 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2354 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2355 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2356
2357 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2358 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2359
2360 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2361 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2362 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2363 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2364 Windows and SymbianOS).
2365
2366 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2367 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2368
2369 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2370 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2371
2372 * New commands
2373
2374 set remoteflow
2375 show remoteflow
2376 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2377 when debugging using remote targets.
2378
2379 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2380 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2381 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2382 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2383 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2384 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2385 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2386
2387 set breakpoint auto-hw
2388 show breakpoint auto-hw
2389 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2390 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2391 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2392 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2393 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2394 including "next" and "finish".
2395
2396 catch exception
2397 catch exception unhandled
2398 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2399
2400 catch assert
2401 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2402
2403 set sysroot
2404 show sysroot
2405 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2406 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2407 an alias to "set sysroot".
2408
2409 info spu
2410 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2411 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2412 architecture.
2413
2414 * New native configurations
2415
2416 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2417
2418 set tdesc filename
2419 unset tdesc filename
2420 show tdesc filename
2421 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2422 not query the target for its built-in description.
2423
2424 * New targets
2425
2426 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2427 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2428 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2429
2430 * New remote packets
2431
2432 QPassSignals:
2433 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2434 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2435
2436 qXfer:features:read:
2437 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2438 features.
2439
2440 qXfer:spu:read:
2441 qXfer:spu:write:
2442 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2443 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2444
2445 qXfer:libraries:read:
2446 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2447 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2448 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2449 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2450
2451 * Removed targets
2452
2453 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2454
2455 alpha*-*-osf1*
2456 alpha*-*-osf2*
2457 d10v-*-*
2458 hppa*-*-hiux*
2459 i[34567]86-ncr-*
2460 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2461 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2462 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2463 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2464 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2465 i[34567]86-*-sco*
2466 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2467 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2468 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2469 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2470 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2471 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2472 i[34567]86-*-isc*
2473 m68*-cisco*-*
2474 m68*-tandem-*
2475 mips*-*-pe
2476 rs6000-*-lynxos*
2477 sh*-*-pe
2478
2479 * Other removed features
2480
2481 target abug
2482 target cpu32bug
2483 target est
2484 target rom68k
2485
2486 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2487
2488 target hms
2489 target e7000
2490 target sh3
2491 target sh3e
2492
2493 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2494 H8/300.
2495
2496 target ocd
2497
2498 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2499 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2500 interfaces.
2501
2502 DWARF 1 support
2503
2504 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2505 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2506
2507 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2508
2509 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2510 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2511 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2512 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2513
2514 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2515
2516 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2517 in debugging information.
2518
2519 Scheme support
2520
2521 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2522 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2523
2524 set mips stack-arg-size
2525 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2526
2527 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2528
2529 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2530
2531 * New targets
2532
2533 Xtensa xtensa-elf
2534 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2535
2536 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2537 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2538 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2539
2540 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2541 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2542 supported.
2543
2544 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2545 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2546
2547 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2548 stub provides the required support.
2549
2550 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2551 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2552
2553 * New commands
2554
2555 set substitute-path
2556 unset substitute-path
2557 show substitute-path
2558 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2559 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2560 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2561 between compilation and debugging.
2562
2563 set trace-commands
2564 show trace-commands
2565 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2566 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2567 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2568
2569 * REMOVED features
2570
2571 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2572
2573 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2574 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2575
2576 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2577
2578 * New remote packets
2579
2580 qSupported:
2581 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2582 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2583 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2584 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2585 target.
2586
2587 qXfer:auxv:read:
2588 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2589 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2590
2591 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2592 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2593 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2594
2595 vFlashErase:
2596 vFlashWrite:
2597 vFlashDone:
2598 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2599
2600 * Removed remote packets
2601
2602 qPart:auxv:read:
2603 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2604 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2605
2606 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2607
2608 * New targets
2609
2610 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2611
2612 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2613
2614 * New commands
2615
2616 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2617 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2618
2619 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2620
2621 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2622
2623 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2624 previously saved state.
2625
2626 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2627
2628 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2629
2630 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2631 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2632
2633 info forks List forks of the user program that
2634 are available to be debugged.
2635
2636 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2637 forks of the user program that are
2638 available to be debugged.
2639
2640 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2641 that are available to be debugged (and
2642 kill the forked process).
2643
2644 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2645 that are available to be debugged (and
2646 allow the process to continue).
2647
2648 * New architecture
2649
2650 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2651
2652 * Improved Windows host support
2653
2654 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2655 native console support, and remote communications using either
2656 network sockets or serial ports.
2657
2658 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2659
2660 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2661 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2662 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2663 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2664 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2665 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2666
2667 * REMOVED features
2668
2669 The ARM rdi-share module.
2670
2671 The Netware NLM debug server.
2672
2673 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2674
2675 * New native configurations
2676
2677 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2678 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2679
2680 * New targets
2681
2682 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2683
2684 * New command line options
2685
2686 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2687 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2688 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2689 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2690 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2691 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2692 with the --command (-x) option.
2693
2694 * Deprecated commands removed
2695
2696 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2697 removed:
2698
2699 Command Replacement
2700 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2701 othernames set arm disassembler
2702 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2703 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2704 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2705 regs info registers
2706
2707 * New BSD user-level threads support
2708
2709 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2710 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2711 configurations are:
2712
2713 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2714 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2715 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2716
2717 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2718 are not yet supported.
2719
2720 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2721 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2722
2723 * REMOVED configurations and files
2724
2725 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2726 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2727 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2728
2729 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2730
2731 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2732 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2733 behavior.
2734
2735 * VAX floating point support
2736
2737 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2738
2739 * User-defined command support
2740
2741 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2742 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2743 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2744
2745 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2746
2747 * New command line option
2748
2749 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2750 debugging.
2751
2752 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2753
2754 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2755 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2756 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2757 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2758 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2759
2760 * Internationalization
2761
2762 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2763 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2764 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2765
2766 * Ada
2767
2768 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2769 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2770 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2771
2772 * New native configurations
2773
2774 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2775
2776 * Remote 'p' packet
2777
2778 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2779 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2780
2781 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2782
2783 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2784 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2785 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2786 i386 application).
2787
2788 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2789 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2790 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2791 configurations:
2792
2793 hppa-*-hpux
2794 ia64-*-aix
2795 mips-*-irix*
2796 *-*-lynx
2797 mips-*-linux-gnu
2798 sds protocol
2799 xdr protocol
2800 powerpc bdm protocol
2801
2802 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2803 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2804
2805 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2806
2807 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2808 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2809 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2810 permanently REMOVED.
2811
2812 h8300-*-*
2813 mcore-*-*
2814 mn10300-*-*
2815 ns32k-*-*
2816 sh64-*-*
2817 v850-*-*
2818
2819 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2820
2821 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2822
2823 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2824 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2825 been fixed.
2826
2827 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2828
2829 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2830 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2831 IRIX long double values).
2832
2833 * VAX and "next"
2834
2835 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2836 command. This problem has been fixed.
2837
2838 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2839
2840 * Fix for ``many threads''
2841
2842 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2843 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2844 error message:
2845
2846 ptrace: No such process.
2847 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2848
2849 This problem has been fixed.
2850
2851 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2852
2853 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2854 GDB to dump core).
2855
2856 * New ``start'' command.
2857
2858 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2859
2860 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2861
2862 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2863 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2864 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2865
2866 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2867 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2868 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2869 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2870 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2871 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2872 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2873 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2874 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2875
2876 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2877
2878 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2879 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2880 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2881 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2882 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2883
2884 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2885 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2886 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2887
2888 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2889
2890 * New native configurations
2891
2892 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2893 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2894 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2895 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2896 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2897 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2898 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2899
2900 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2901
2902 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2903 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2904 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2905 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2906 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2907 work, was also included.
2908
2909 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2910 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2911
2912 h8300-*-*
2913 mcore-*-*
2914 mn10300-*-*
2915 ns32k-*-*
2916 sh64-*-*
2917 v850-*-*
2918 xstormy16-*-*
2919
2920 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2921 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2922
2923 * REMOVED configurations and files
2924
2925 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2926 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2927 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2928 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2929 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2930 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2931 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2932 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2933 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2934 sonymips mips-sony-*
2935 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2936
2937 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2938
2939 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2940
2941 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2942 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2943 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2944 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2945 with GDB".
2946
2947 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2948
2949 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2950 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2951 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2952 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2953 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2954 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2955 are created.
2956
2957 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2958
2959 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2960
2961 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2962 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2963 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2964
2965 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2966
2967 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2968 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2969
2970 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2971
2972 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2973 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2974 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2975
2976 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2977
2978 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2979 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2980
2981 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2982
2983 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2984 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2985 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2986
2987 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2988
2989 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2990 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2991 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2992
2993 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2994
2995 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2996
2997 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2998 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2999
3000 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3001
3002 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3003 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3004 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3005 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3006
3007 * Revised SPARC target
3008
3009 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3010 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3011 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3012 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3013 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3014
3015 * New C++ demangler
3016
3017 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3018 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3019 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3020 programs.
3021
3022 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3023
3024 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3025 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3026 encountered these.
3027
3028 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3029
3030 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3031 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3032 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3033 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3034 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3035 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3036 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3037 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3038 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3039
3040 * New native configurations
3041
3042 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3043 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3044 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3045 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3046 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3047
3048 * New debugging protocols
3049
3050 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3051
3052 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3053
3054 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3055 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3056 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3057
3058 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3059
3060 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3061 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3062 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3063 permanently REMOVED.
3064
3065 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3066 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3067 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3068 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3069 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3070 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3071 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3072 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3073 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3074 sonymips mips-sony-*
3075 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3076
3077 * REMOVED configurations and files
3078
3079 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3080 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3081 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3082 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3083 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3084 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3085 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3086 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3087 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3088 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3089 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3090 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3091 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3092 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3093 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3094 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3095 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3096
3097 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3098
3099 * Objective-C
3100
3101 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3102 integrated into GDB.
3103
3104 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3105
3106 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3107 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3108 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3109 backtraces.
3110
3111 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3112 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3113 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3114
3115 * Hosted file I/O.
3116
3117 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3118 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3119 remote protocol documentation for details.
3120
3121 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3122
3123 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3124 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3125 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3126 ppc32 on ppc64).
3127
3128 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3129
3130 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3131 per-thread variables.
3132
3133 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3134
3135 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3136 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3137
3138 * Separate debug info.
3139
3140 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3141 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3142 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3143 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3144 and optional debug files.
3145
3146 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3147
3148 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3149 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3150 debugger.
3151
3152 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3153 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3154
3155 * Java
3156
3157 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3158 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3159 considered "useable".
3160
3161 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3162
3163 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3164 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3165 kernel.
3166
3167 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3168
3169 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3170 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3171
3172 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3173
3174 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3175 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3176 command.
3177
3178 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3179
3180 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3181 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3182
3183 * Profiling support
3184
3185 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3186 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3187 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3188 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3189 data, for more informative profiling results.
3190
3191 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3192
3193 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3194 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3195 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3196
3197 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3198 removed.
3199
3200 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3201 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3202 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3203 in a subsequent -var-update.
3204
3205 * New native configurations.
3206
3207 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3208
3209 * Multi-arched targets.
3210
3211 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3212 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3213
3214 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3215
3216 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3217 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3218 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3219 permanently REMOVED.
3220
3221 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3222 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3223 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3224 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3225 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3226 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3227 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3228 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3229 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3230 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3231 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3232 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3233
3234 * REMOVED configurations and files
3235
3236 V850EA ISA
3237 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3238 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3239 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3240 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3241 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3242 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3243 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3244 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3245 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3246 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3247 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3248 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3249 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3250
3251 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3252
3253 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3254 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3255 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3256 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3257 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3258
3259 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3260
3261 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3262
3263 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3264 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3265 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3266 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3267 shared libs like mad''.
3268
3269 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3270
3271 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3272 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3273 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3274 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3275
3276 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3277
3278 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3279 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3280 they expand.
3281
3282 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3283 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3284
3285 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3286 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3287
3288 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3289 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3290 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3291 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3292
3293 * Multi-arched targets.
3294
3295 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3296 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3297 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3298 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3299 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3300 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3301
3302 * New targets.
3303
3304 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3305
3306
3307 * New native configurations
3308
3309 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3310 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3311 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3312 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3313
3314 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3315
3316 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3317 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3318 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3319 permanently REMOVED.
3320
3321 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3322 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3323 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3324 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3325 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3326 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3327 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3328 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3329 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3330 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3331 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3332 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3333 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3334
3335 * OBSOLETE languages
3336
3337 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3338
3339 * REMOVED configurations and files
3340
3341 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3342 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3343 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3344 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3345 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3346
3347 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3348
3349 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3350
3351 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3352 commands. The default is 1024.
3353
3354 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3355
3356 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3357
3358 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3359
3360 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3361 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3362 from a file into memory (restore).
3363
3364 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3365
3366 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3367 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3368 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3369
3370 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3371
3372 * New targets.
3373
3374 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3375
3376 * Bug fixes
3377
3378 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3379 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3380 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3381
3382 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3383 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3384 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3385
3386 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3387 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3388 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3389
3390 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3391 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3392 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3393
3394 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3395
3396 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3397
3398 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3399 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3400 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3401 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3402 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3403 (notably embedded) targets.
3404
3405 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3406
3407 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3408 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3409 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3410 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3411
3412 * New command line option
3413
3414 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3415
3416 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3417
3418 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3419 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3420 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3421 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3422 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3423 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3424 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3425 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3426 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3427 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3428
3429 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3430
3431 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3432 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3433
3434 * New native configurations
3435
3436 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3437 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3438 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3439 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3440
3441 * New targets
3442
3443 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3444
3445 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3446
3447 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3448 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3449 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3450 permanently REMOVED.
3451
3452 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3453 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3454 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3455 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3456 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3457
3458 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3459
3460 * REMOVED configurations and files
3461
3462 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3463 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3464 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3465 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3466 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3467 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3468 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3469 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3470 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3471 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3472 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3473 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3474 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3475
3476 * Changes to command line processing
3477
3478 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3479 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3480
3481 * Changes to key bindings
3482
3483 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3484
3485 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3486
3487 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3488
3489 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3490 corrupted.
3491
3492 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3493
3494 Numerous documentation fixes.
3495
3496 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3497
3498 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3499
3500 * New native configurations
3501
3502 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3503 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3504 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3505 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3506 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3507 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3508
3509 * New targets
3510
3511 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3512 CRIS cris-axis
3513 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3514
3515 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3516
3517 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3518 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3519 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3520 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3521 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3522 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3523 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3524 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3525 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3526 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3527 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3528 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3529 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3530 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3531
3532 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3533 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3534
3535 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3536 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3537 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3538 permanently REMOVED.
3539
3540 * REMOVED configurations and files
3541
3542 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3543 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3544 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3545 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3546 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3547 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
3548
3549 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3550
3551 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3552 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3553 present.
3554
3555 * Other news:
3556
3557 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3558
3559 * The MI enabled by default.
3560
3561 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3562 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3563 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3564 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3565 which is now deprecated.
3566
3567 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3568
3569 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3570 main features are supported:
3571
3572 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3573
3574 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3575 extension;
3576
3577 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3578
3579 - a Pascal expression parser.
3580
3581 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3582
3583 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3584
3585 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3586
3587 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3588 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3589
3590 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3591
3592 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3593
3594 * Changes in completion.
3595
3596 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3597 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3598 users expect at the shell prompt.
3599
3600 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3601 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3602 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3603 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3604 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3605 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3606 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3607
3608 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3609
3610 * New platform-independent commands:
3611
3612 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3613 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3614 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3615
3616 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3617
3618 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3619 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3620 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3621
3622 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3623
3624 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3625 multi-threaded programs though.
3626
3627 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3628
3629 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3630
3631 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3632 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3633 supported.)
3634
3635 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3636
3637 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3638 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3639 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3640 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3641 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3642 registers.
3643
3644 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3645 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3646 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3647
3648 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3649
3650 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3651 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3652
3653 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3654 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3655 IDT.
3656
3657 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3658 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3659 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3660 a given linear address.
3661
3662 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3663 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3664 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3665
3666 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3667
3668 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3669
3670 * Changes in documentation.
3671
3672 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3673 Documentation License.
3674
3675 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3676 manual.
3677
3678 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3679
3680 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3681 manual.
3682
3683 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3684 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3685 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3686
3687 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3688
3689 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3690 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3691 contents of this file.
3692
3693 * gdba.el deleted
3694
3695 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3696
3697 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3698
3699 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3700
3701 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3702 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3703 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3704 greater level of detail.
3705
3706 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3707
3708 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3709 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3710 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3711 written.
3712
3713 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3714
3715 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3716 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3717 machines ``out of the box''.
3718
3719 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3720 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3721 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3722 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3723 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3724
3725 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3726 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3727 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3728 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3729 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3730
3731 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3732 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3733 also works.
3734
3735 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3736 GDB.
3737
3738 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3739 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3740 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3741 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3742
3743 * New native configurations
3744
3745 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3746 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3747
3748 * New targets
3749
3750 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3751 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3752 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3753 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3754
3755 * OBSOLETE configurations
3756
3757 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3758 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3759 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3760 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3761 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3762
3763 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3764 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3765 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3766 be permanently REMOVED.
3767
3768 * Gould support removed
3769
3770 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3771
3772 * New features for SVR4
3773
3774 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3775 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3776 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3777
3778 * Many C++ enhancements
3779
3780 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3781 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3782
3783 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3784
3785 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3786 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3787 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3788 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3789
3790 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3791 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3792
3793 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3794
3795 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3796 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3797 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3798
3799 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3800 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3801
3802 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3803
3804 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3805 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3806 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3807
3808 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3809
3810 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3811 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3812 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3813
3814 * ``apropos'' command added.
3815
3816 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3817 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3818 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3819
3820 * New MI interface
3821
3822 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3823 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3824 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3825 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3826 enabled by configuring with:
3827
3828 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3829
3830 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3831
3832 * New native configurations
3833
3834 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3835 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3836 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3837
3838 * New targets
3839
3840 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3841 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3842 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3843
3844 * OBSOLETE configurations
3845
3846 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3847
3848 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3849 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3850 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3851 be permanently REMOVED.
3852
3853 * ANSI/ISO C
3854
3855 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3856 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3857 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3858 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3859 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3860 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3861 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3862 already.
3863
3864 * Readline 2.2
3865
3866 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3867
3868 * set extension-language
3869
3870 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3871 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3872 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3873 set extension-language .c c++
3874 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3875 and their associated languages.
3876
3877 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3878
3879 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3880 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3881 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3882
3883 set processor NAME
3884
3885 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3886 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3887
3888 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3889 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3890 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3891 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3892 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3893 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3894 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3895 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3896 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3897 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3898 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3899
3900 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3901 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3902 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3903 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3904
3905 * HP-UX support
3906
3907 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3908 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3909 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3910 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3911 for xdb and dbx commands.
3912
3913 * Catchpoints
3914
3915 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3916 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3917 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3918
3919 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3920 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3921 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3922
3923 * Debugging across forks
3924
3925 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3926 in the inferior.
3927
3928 * TUI
3929
3930 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3931 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3932 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3933
3934 * GDB remote protocol additions
3935
3936 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3937 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3938 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3939 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3940
3941 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3942 full 64-bit address. The command
3943
3944 set remoteaddresssize 32
3945
3946 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3947 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3948 will be discarded.
3949
3950 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3951 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3952
3953 maint packet heythere
3954
3955 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3956 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3957 time.
3958
3959 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3960 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3961 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3962
3963 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3964
3965 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3966 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3967 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3968
3969 * mask-address variable for Mips
3970
3971 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3972 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3973 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3974
3975 * Higher serial baud rates
3976
3977 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3978 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3979 to achieve all of these rates.)
3980
3981 * i960 simulator
3982
3983 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3984 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3985
3986
3987 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3988
3989 * New native configurations
3990
3991 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3992 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3993 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3994 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3995 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3996 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3997 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3998
3999 * New targets
4000
4001 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4002 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4003 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4004 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4005 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4006 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4007 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4008 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4009 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4010 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4011 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4012
4013 * New debugging protocols
4014
4015 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4016 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4017 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4018 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4019 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4020 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4021
4022 * DWARF 2
4023
4024 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4025 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4026 information.
4027
4028 * Java frontend
4029
4030 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4031 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4032
4033 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4034
4035 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4036 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4037 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4038
4039 * Live range splitting
4040
4041 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4042 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4043 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4044
4045 * Hurd support
4046
4047 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4048 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4049
4050 * ARM Thumb support
4051
4052 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4053 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4054 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4055 accordingly.
4056
4057 * MIPS16 support
4058
4059 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4060 instruction set.
4061
4062 * Overlay support
4063
4064 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4065 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4066 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4067 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4068 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4069 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4070
4071 * info symbol
4072
4073 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4074 the symbol at the specified address.
4075
4076 * Trace support
4077
4078 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4079 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4080 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4081 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4082 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4083
4084 * MIPS simulator
4085
4086 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4087 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4088 of most MIPS variants.
4089
4090 * Sparc simulator
4091
4092 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4093 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4094 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4095
4096 * set architecture
4097
4098 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4099 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4100 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4101 the possible architectures.
4102
4103 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4104
4105 * New native configurations
4106
4107 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4108 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4109 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4110 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4111 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4112 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4113
4114 * New targets
4115
4116 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4117 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4118 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4119 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4120 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4121 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4122 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4123
4124 * PowerPC simulator
4125
4126 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4127 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4128 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4129 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4130 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4131
4132 * Solaris 2.5
4133
4134 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4135
4136 * Windows 95/NT native
4137
4138 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4139 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4140 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4141 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4142 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4143
4144 * dont-repeat command
4145
4146 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4147 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4148 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4149 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4150
4151 * Send break instead of ^C
4152
4153 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4154 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4155 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4156
4157 * Remote protocol timeout
4158
4159 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4160 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4161 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4162
4163 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4164
4165 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4166 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4167 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4168 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4169 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4170
4171 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4172 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4173 automatically on hpux10.
4174
4175 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4176
4177 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4178
4179 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4180
4181 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4182 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4183 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4184 every character. The default value is 1050.
4185
4186 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4187
4188 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4189 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4190 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4191 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4192 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4193 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4194
4195 * Speedups for remote debugging
4196
4197 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4198 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4199 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4200
4201 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4202
4203 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4204 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4205
4206 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4207
4208 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4209
4210 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4211 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4212
4213 * Remote targets use caching
4214
4215 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4216 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4217 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4218 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4219 off' turns the the data cache off.
4220
4221 * Remote targets may have threads
4222
4223 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4224 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4225 gdb/remote.c for details.
4226
4227 * NetROM support
4228
4229 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4230 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4231 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4232 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4233 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4234 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4235 sequence is something like
4236
4237 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4238 load <prog>
4239 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4240
4241 * Macintosh host
4242
4243 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4244 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4245 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4246 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4247 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4248 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4249 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4250 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4251
4252 * Autoconf
4253
4254 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4255 but does simplify configuration and building.
4256
4257 * hpux10
4258
4259 GDB now supports hpux10.
4260
4261 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4262
4263 * New native configurations
4264
4265 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4266 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4267 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4268 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4269
4270 * New targets
4271
4272 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4273 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4274 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4275 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4276 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4277
4278 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4279
4280 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4281 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4282 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4283 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4284 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4285
4286 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4287
4288 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4289 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4290 trivial example:
4291 define adder
4292 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4293
4294 To execute the command use:
4295 adder 1 2 3
4296
4297 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4298 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4299 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4300
4301 * New `if' and `while' commands
4302
4303 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4304 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4305 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4306 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4307 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4308 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4309 if the expression is zero.
4310
4311 * Fortran source language mode
4312
4313 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4314 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4315 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4316 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4317 Fortran compilers.
4318
4319 * Better HPUX support
4320
4321 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4322 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4323 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4324 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4325 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4326
4327 adb -w a.out
4328 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4329 control-d
4330
4331 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4332 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4333
4334 adb -w a.out
4335 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4336 control-d
4337
4338 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4339 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4340 external linkage.
4341
4342 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4343 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4344
4345 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4346
4347 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4348 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4349 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4350 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4351 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4352 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4353
4354 * New DOS host serial code
4355
4356 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4357 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4358 a PC's serial port.
4359
4360 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4361
4362 * New "complete" command
4363
4364 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4365 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4366
4367 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4368
4369 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4370 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4371
4372 * Breakpoint hit counts
4373
4374 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4375 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4376 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4377 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4378 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4379 that breakpoint.
4380
4381 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4382
4383 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4384 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4385 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4386
4387 * Shared library breakpoints
4388
4389 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4390 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4391
4392 * Hardware watchpoints
4393
4394 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4395 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4396
4397 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4398
4399 * Annotations
4400
4401 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4402 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4403
4404 * Improved Irix 5 support
4405
4406 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4407
4408 * Improved HPPA support
4409
4410 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4411
4412 * New native configurations
4413
4414 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4415 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4416 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4417 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4418
4419 * New targets
4420
4421 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4422 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4423 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4424
4425 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4426
4427 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4428 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4429
4430 * Fixes
4431
4432 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4433 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4434
4435 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4436
4437 * Irix 5 is now supported
4438
4439 * HPPA support
4440
4441 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4442 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4443 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4444 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4445 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4446
4447
4448 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4449
4450 * User visible changes:
4451
4452 * Remote Debugging
4453
4454 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4455 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4456 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4457 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4458 debugging info for the mips target).
4459
4460 * DEC Alpha native support
4461
4462 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4463 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4464 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4465 Alpha-specific notes.
4466
4467 * Preliminary thread implementation
4468
4469 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4470
4471 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4472
4473 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4474 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4475 for details).
4476
4477 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4478
4479 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4480 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4481 call methods, ...etc.
4482
4483 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4484
4485 * User visible changes:
4486
4487 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4488 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4489 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4490 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4491
4492 Filename completion now works.
4493
4494 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4495 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4496 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4497
4498 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4499 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4500 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4501 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4502 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4503
4504 * DEC alpha support
4505
4506 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4507 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4508
4509
4510 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4511
4512 * Testsuite
4513
4514 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4515 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4516 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4517
4518 * C++ demangling
4519
4520 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4521 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4522 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4523 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4524 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4525
4526 * Simulators
4527
4528 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4529 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4530 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4531
4532 * New targets supported
4533
4534 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4535 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4536 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4537 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4538 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4539
4540 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4541 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4542 GO32 memory extender.
4543
4544 * New remote protocols
4545
4546 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4547
4548 * New source languages supported
4549
4550 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4551 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4552 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4553
4554
4555 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4556
4557 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4558
4559 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4560 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4561 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4562 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4563 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4564 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4565
4566 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4567
4568 * Faster and better demangling
4569
4570 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4571 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4572 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4573 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4574 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4575 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4576 symbol lookups.
4577
4578 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4579 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4580 compiler does not actually implement.
4581
4582 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4583
4584 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4585 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4586 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4587 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4588 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4589 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4590 fix.
4591
4592 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4593 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4594
4595 * Improved configure script
4596
4597 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4598 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4599 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4600 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4601
4602 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4603 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4604 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4605 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4606 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4607 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4608
4609 * Documentation improvements
4610
4611 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4612 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4613 before submitting changes.
4614
4615 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4616 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4617 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4618 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4619 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4620
4621 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4622 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4623 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4624 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4625 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4626 around this problem.
4627
4628 * New features
4629
4630 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4631 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4632 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4633 the target program.
4634
4635 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4636 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4637
4638 * New native hosts supported
4639
4640 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4641 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4642
4643 * New targets supported
4644
4645 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4646
4647 * New file formats supported
4648
4649 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4650 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4651
4652 * Major bug fixes
4653
4654 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4655
4656 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4657 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4658
4659 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4660 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4661 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4662
4663 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4664 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4665
4666 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4667 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4668 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4669 libraries.
4670
4671 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4672 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4673 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4674 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4675 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4676
4677 * Internal improvements
4678
4679 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4680 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4681
4682 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4683 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4684 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4685 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4686 shared code that handles any of them.
4687
4688 * New command line options
4689
4690 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4691
4692 * Mmalloc licensing
4693
4694 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4695 General Public License.
4696
4697 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4698
4699 * Host/native/target split
4700
4701 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4702 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4703 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4704 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4705 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4706
4707 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4708 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4709 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4710 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4711 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4712 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4713 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4714
4715 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4716 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4717 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4718
4719 * New hosts supported
4720
4721 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4722 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4723 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4724
4725 * New targets supported
4726
4727 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4728 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4729
4730 * New native hosts supported
4731
4732 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4733 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4734 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4735
4736 * New file formats supported
4737
4738 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4739 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4740 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4741
4742 * New commands
4743
4744 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4745 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4746 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4747
4748 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4749
4750 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4751 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4752 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4753 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4754
4755 * C++ improvements
4756
4757 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4758 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4759 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4760
4761 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4762
4763 * Major bug fixes
4764
4765 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4766 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4767 by the compiler.
4768
4769 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4770 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4771
4772 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4773 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4774 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4775 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4776 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4777 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4778
4779 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4780 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4781 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4782 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4783
4784 * AMD 29k support
4785
4786 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4787 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4788 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4789 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4790 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4791
4792 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4793 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4794 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4795 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4796
4797 * Remote interfaces
4798
4799 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4800 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4801 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4802 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4803 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4804 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4805 each instruction being stepped through.
4806
4807 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4808 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4809
4810 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4811 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4812 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4813 processor with a serial port.
4814
4815 * Configuration
4816
4817 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4818 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4819 supported, and what files each one uses.
4820
4821 * Library changes
4822
4823 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4824 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4825 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4826 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4827
4828 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4829 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4830 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4831 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4832
4833 * Documentation
4834
4835 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4836 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4837 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4838 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4839 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4840 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4841
4842 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4843
4844
4845 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4846
4847 * Better support for C++ function names
4848
4849 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4850 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4851 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4852 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4853 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4854
4855 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4856 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4857 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4858 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4859 for the list of formats.
4860
4861 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4862
4863 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4864 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4865 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4866 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4867 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4868 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4869 this problem.)
4870
4871 * New 'maintenance' command
4872
4873 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4874 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4875 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4876
4877 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4878 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4879 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4880 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4881 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4882 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4883
4884 The following commands are new:
4885
4886 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4887 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4888 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4889
4890 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4891
4892 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4893 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4894 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4895 read after argv processing.
4896
4897 * New hosts supported
4898
4899 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4900
4901 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4902
4903 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4904 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4905 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4906 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4907 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4908 It costs extra.
4909
4910 * New targets supported
4911
4912 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4913
4914 * More smarts about finding #include files
4915
4916 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4917 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4918 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4919 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4920 the one that contains your sources.
4921
4922 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4923 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4924 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4925
4926 * Interesting infernals change
4927
4928 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4929 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4930 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4931 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4932
4933 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4934
4935 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4936 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4937 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4938
4939 See the ChangeLog for details.
4940
4941 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4942
4943 * New machines supported (host and target)
4944
4945 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4946
4947 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4948
4949 * New malloc package
4950
4951 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4952 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4953 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4954 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4955 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4956 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4957
4958 * info proc
4959
4960 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4961 'help info proc' for details.
4962
4963 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4964
4965 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4966 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4967 possible.
4968
4969 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4970
4971 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4972 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4973 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4974 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4975 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4976 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4977
4978 * Cross byte order fixes
4979
4980 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4981 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4982
4983 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4984
4985 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4986 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4987 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4988 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4989 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4990 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4991 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4992 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4993 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4994 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4995
4996 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4997 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4998 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4999 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5000
5001 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5002 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5003 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5004 use is:
5005
5006 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5007
5008 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5009 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5010 shared across multiple host platforms.
5011
5012 * longjmp() handling
5013
5014 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5015 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5016 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5017 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5018
5019 * Solaris 2.0
5020
5021 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5022 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5023 reading symbols.
5024
5025 * Bug fixes
5026
5027 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5028 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5029 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5030
5031 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5032
5033 * New machines supported (host and target)
5034
5035 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5036 (except core files)
5037 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5038 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5039
5040 * New machines supported (target)
5041
5042 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5043
5044 * C++ support
5045
5046 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5047 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5048 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5049
5050 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5051 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5052 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5053 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5054 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5055 released.
5056
5057 * New features for SVR4
5058
5059 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5060 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5061 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5062
5063 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5064 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5065 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5066
5067 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5068 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5069
5070 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5071
5072 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5073 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5074 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5075 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5076 same code linked statically.
5077
5078 * New Getopt
5079
5080 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5081 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5082 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5083 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5084 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5085 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5086
5087 * Bugs fixed
5088
5089 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5090 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5091 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5092
5093
5094 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5095
5096 * New machines supported (host and target)
5097
5098 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5099 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5100 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5101
5102 * Almost SCO Unix support
5103
5104 We had hoped to support:
5105 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5106 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5107 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5108 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5109
5110 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5111
5112 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5113 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5114 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5115 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5116 reqired (if any).
5117
5118 * New Readline
5119
5120 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5121 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5122 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5123
5124 * Bugs fixed
5125
5126 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5127 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5128 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5129
5130 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5131
5132 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5133 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5134 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5135
5136 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5137 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5138 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5139 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5140 version 2.
5141
5142 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5143 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5144 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5145 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5146 situation somewhat.
5147
5148 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5149 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5150 methods.
5151
5152 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5153 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5154 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5155
5156
5157 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5158
5159 * Improved configuration
5160
5161 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5162 Porting BFD is simpler.
5163
5164 * Stepping improved
5165
5166 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5167 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5168 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5169 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5170
5171 * Bug fixing
5172
5173 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5174
5175 * New host supported (not target)
5176
5177 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5178
5179
5180 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5181
5182 * Multiple source language support
5183
5184 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5185 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5186 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5187 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5188 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5189 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5190
5191 * GDB and Modula-2
5192
5193 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5194 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5195 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5196 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5197
5198 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5199 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5200 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5201
5202 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5203 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5204
5205 * set write on/off
5206
5207 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5208 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5209 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5210 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5211 effect immediately.
5212
5213 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5214
5215 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5216 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5217 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5218 examining core files.
5219
5220 * set listsize
5221
5222 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5223 The default is 10.
5224
5225 * New machines supported (host and target)
5226
5227 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5228 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5229 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5230
5231 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5232
5233 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5234
5235 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5236
5237 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5238 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5239 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5240
5241 * New remote interfaces
5242
5243 AMD 29000 Adapt
5244 AMD 29000 Minimon
5245
5246
5247 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5248
5249 * New Facilities
5250
5251 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5252
5253 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5254 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5255 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5256 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5257 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5258 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5259 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5260 stub on the target system.
5261
5262 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5263
5264 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5265 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5266 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5267
5268 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5269 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5270
5271
5272 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5273
5274 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5275 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5276
5277 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5278 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5279 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5280
5281 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5282 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5283 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5284 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5285
5286 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5287 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5288 it is already running. Default is ON.
5289
5290 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5291 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5292 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5293 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5294 Default is ON.
5295
5296 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5297 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5298 or the value of the environment variable
5299 GDBHISTFILE.
5300
5301 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5302 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5303 HISTSIZE.
5304
5305 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5306 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5307 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5308
5309 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5310 history expansion will be performed on
5311 command line input. The default is OFF.
5312
5313 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5314 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5315 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5316
5317 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5318 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5319 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5320 variable TERM.
5321
5322 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5323 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5324 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5325 variable TERM.
5326
5327 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5328 ``set width'' instead.
5329
5330 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5331 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5332 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5333 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5334
5335 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5336 is OFF.
5337
5338 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5339 "raw" form if off.
5340
5341 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5342 like instructions.
5343
5344 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5345
5346
5347 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5348
5349 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5350 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5351 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5352 window.
5353
5354
5355 * Support for Shared Libraries
5356
5357 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5358 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5359 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5360 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5361 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5362 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5363 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5364 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5365
5366 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5367 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5368 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5369
5370 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5371
5372
5373 * Watchpoints
5374
5375 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5376 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5377 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5378 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5379 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5380 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5381
5382 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5383
5384 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5385
5386 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5387 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5388 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5389
5390
5391 * C++ multiple inheritance
5392
5393 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5394 for C++ programs.
5395
5396 * C++ exception handling
5397
5398 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5399 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5400 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5401 handler's context).
5402
5403 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5404 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5405 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5406
5407 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5408 current stack frame.
5409
5410
5411 * Minor command changes
5412
5413 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5414 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5415 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5416
5417 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5418 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5419 frames without printing.
5420
5421 * New directory command
5422
5423 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5424 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5425 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5426 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5427 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5428
5429 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5430
5431 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5432 for more details.
5433
5434 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5435 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5436 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5437 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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