2012-03-05 Tristan Gingold <gingold@adacore.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.4
5
6 * Python scripting
7
8 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
9 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
10
11 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
12
13 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
14 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
15
16 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
17
18 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
19 the source at which the symbol was defined.
20
21 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
22 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
23 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
24 symbol's value.
25
26 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
27 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
28
29 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
30 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
31
32 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
33 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
34 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
35 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
36 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
37 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
38
39 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
40 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
41 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
42 build/libcpp/expr.c.
43
44 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
45 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
46
47 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
48 since December 2007.
49
50 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
51 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
52 command does. For instance:
53
54 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
55
56 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
57 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
58 created, using the "condition" command.
59
60 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
61 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
62
63 * New commands
64
65 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
66 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
67
68 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
69 several hits.
70
71 * New targets
72
73 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
74 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
75
76 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
77 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
78 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
79 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
80 evaluates to true.
81
82 * New options
83
84 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
85 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
86 Controls whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("gdb") or by
87 GDBserver ("target").
88 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
89 target.
90
91 * New remote packets
92
93 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
94 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
95 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
96 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
97
98 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
99
100 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
101 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
102 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
103 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
104 inferior changes.
105
106 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
107 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
108
109 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
110 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
111 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
112 target hardware watchpoint.
113
114 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
115 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
116 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
117 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
118
119 * Python scripting
120
121 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
122 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
123 existing one.
124
125 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
126 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
127 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
128 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
129 now "message", which just prints the error message without
130 the stack trace.
131
132 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
133 Python API.
134
135 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
136 modules library. This module provides functionality for
137 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
138 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
139 corresponding value.
140
141 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
142 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
143 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
144 on GDB start-up.
145
146 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
147 static_block will return the global and static blocks
148 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
149 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
150
151 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
152
153 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
154 "gdb.breakpoints".
155
156 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
157 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
158 available in the CLI.
159
160 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
161 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
162 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
163 "some_type.items()".
164
165 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
166 new object file.
167
168 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
169 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
170 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
171 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
172 any anonymous fields.
173
174 * MI changes
175
176 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
177 "solib-event".
178
179 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
180 "=breakpoint-modified".
181
182 ** New command -ada-task-info.
183
184 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
185 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
186 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
187 lives.
188
189 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
190 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
191 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
192 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
193 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
194
195 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
196 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
197
198 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
199 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
200 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
201 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
202 use this option to specify where to find it.
203
204 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
205 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
206 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
207 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
208 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
209 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
210 section in the user manual for more details.
211
212 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
213 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
214 become available after that.
215
216 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
217
218 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
219 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
220 gcc version 4.7.
221
222 * New commands
223
224 !SHELL COMMAND
225 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
226 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
227
228 * Changed commands
229
230 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
231 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
232 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
233
234 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
235 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
236 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
237
238 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
239 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
240 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
241 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
242 name starts with a hyphen.
243
244 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
245 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
246 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
247 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
248 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
249 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
250 number of bytes that will be collected.
251
252 tstart [NOTES]
253 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
254 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
255 setting the variable trace-notes.
256
257 tstop [NOTES]
258 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
259 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
260 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
261 trace-stop-notes.
262
263 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
264 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
265 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
266 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
267 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
268 is running.
269
270 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
271 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
272 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
273
274 * New options
275
276 set extended-prompt
277 show extended-prompt
278 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
279 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
280 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
281 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
282 prompt is displayed.
283
284 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
285 show print entry-values
286 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
287 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
288 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
289
290 set debug entry-values
291 show debug entry-values
292 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
293 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
294
295 set basenames-may-differ
296 show basenames-may-differ
297 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
298 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
299 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
300 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
301 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
302 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
303 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
304 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
305
306 set trace-user
307 show trace-user
308 set trace-notes
309 show trace-notes
310 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
311 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
312 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
313 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
314
315 set trace-stop-notes
316 show trace-stop-notes
317 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
318 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
319 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
320 started by someone else.
321
322 * New remote packets
323
324 QTEnable
325
326 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
327
328 QTDisable
329
330 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
331
332 QTNotes
333
334 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
335
336 qTP
337
338 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
339
340 qTMinFTPILen
341
342 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
343 be placed.
344
345 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
346 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
347
348 * New targets
349
350 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
351
352 * New Simulators
353
354 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
355
356 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
357
358 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
359
360 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
361
362 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
363 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
364 matches the given regular expression.
365
366 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
367
368 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
369 dumping the instruction opcodes.
370
371 * New command line options
372
373 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
374 This is mostly for testing purposes.
375
376 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
377 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
378
379 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
380 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
381 source path list instead of augmenting it.
382
383 * GDB now understands thread names.
384
385 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
386 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
387
388 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
389 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
390
391 * OpenCL C
392 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
393 has been integrated into GDB.
394
395 * Python scripting
396
397 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
398 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
399 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
400
401 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
402 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
403 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
404 and allows for more dynamic content.
405
406 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
407 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
408 have an is_valid method.
409
410 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
411 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
412 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
413
414 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
415
416 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
417 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
418 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
419 that function like so:
420
421 result = some_value (10,20)
422
423 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
424 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
425 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
426
427 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
428 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
429 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
430 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
431 New function: register_pretty_printer.
432
433 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
434 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
435
436 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
437
438 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
439 selected thread.
440
441 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
442 holds the thread's name.
443
444 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
445 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
446 occurring in the process being debugged.
447 The following events are currently supported:
448 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
449 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
450 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
451
452 * C++ Improvements:
453
454 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
455 instantiation. For example, if you have:
456
457 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
458
459 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
460 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
461 was added to GCC 4.5.
462
463 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
464 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
465 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
466 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
467 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
468 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
469
470 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
471 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
472 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
473 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
474 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
475
476 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
477 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
478 execution to a label.
479
480 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
481 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
482 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
483 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
484
485 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
486 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
487 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
488 of scope.
489
490 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
491
492 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
493 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
494 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
495 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
496 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
497 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
498
499 (gdb) info threads
500 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
501
502 While now you see this:
503
504 (gdb) info threads
505 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
506
507 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
508 dumps.
509
510 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
511 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
512 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
513 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
514
515 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
516 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
517 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
518 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
519 section in the user manual for more details.
520
521 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
522
523 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
524 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
525
526 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
527
528 * New native configurations
529
530 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
531
532 * New targets:
533
534 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
535
536 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
537 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
538 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
539 in the GDB user manual.
540
541 * Guile support was removed.
542
543 * New features in the GNU simulator
544
545 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
546
547 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
548
549 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
550
551 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
552
553 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
554 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
555 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
556 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
557 was always disabled for such configurations.
558
559 * C++ Improvements:
560
561 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
562
563 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
564 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
565 For example:
566 namespace A
567 {
568 class B { };
569 void foo (B) { }
570 }
571 ...
572 A::B b
573 foo(b)
574 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
575 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
576 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
577
578 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
579
580 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
581 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
582 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
583 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
584 entry.
585 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
586 mentioned flavors of operators.
587
588 ** static const class members
589
590 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
591 class definition has been fixed.
592
593 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
594
595 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
596 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
597 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
598 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
599 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
600 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
601
602 * Static tracepoints
603
604 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
605 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
606 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
607 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
608 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
609 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
610 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
611 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
612 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
613 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
614 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
615 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
616 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
617 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
618 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
619 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
620 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
621 the "New remote packets" section below.
622
623 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
624
625 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
626 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
627 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
628 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
629
630 * Observer mode
631
632 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
633 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
634 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
635 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
636 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
637 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
638 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
639
640 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
641 current thread.
642
643 * New remote packets
644
645 qGetTIBAddr
646
647 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
648
649 qRelocInsn
650
651 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
652 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
653 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
654 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
655 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
656 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
657
658 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
659
660 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
661
662 qTSTMat
663
664 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
665 program.
666
667 qXfer:statictrace:read
668
669 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
670 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
671 to gdb's qSupported query.
672
673 QAllow
674
675 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
676
677 QTDPsrc
678
679 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
680 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
681
682 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
683 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
684 a directory.
685
686 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
687
688 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
689 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
690 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
691 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
692
693 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
694 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
695 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
696 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
697 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
698 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
699 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
700
701 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
702 for static tracepoints support.
703
704 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
705
706 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
707 it understands register description.
708
709 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
710
711 * X86 general purpose registers
712
713 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
714 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
715 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
716 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
717 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
718
719 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
720 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
721 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
722 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
723 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
724 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
725
726 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
727 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
728 in the specified file.
729
730 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
731 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
732 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
733 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
734 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
735 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
736 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
737 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
738 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
739 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
740
741 * New commands
742
743 eval template, expressions...
744 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
745 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
746
747 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
748 show target-file-system-kind
749 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
750 names.
751
752 save breakpoints <filename>
753 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
754 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
755 definitions, use the `source' command.
756
757 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
758 is now deprecated.
759
760 info static-tracepoint-markers
761 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
762
763 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
764 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
765 function, line, address, or marker ID.
766
767 set observer on|off
768 show observer
769 Enable and disable observer mode.
770
771 set may-write-registers on|off
772 set may-write-memory on|off
773 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
774 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
775 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
776 set may-interrupt on|off
777 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
778 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
779 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
780 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
781 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
782 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
783 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
784
785 set record memory-query on|off
786 show record memory-query
787 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
788 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
789
790 * Changed commands
791
792 disassemble
793 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
794
795 * Python scripting
796
797 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
798 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
799 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
800 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
801 GDB using Python' in the manual.
802
803 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
804 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
805 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
806 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
807
808 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
809 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
810
811 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
812
813 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
814
815 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
816
817 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
818 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
819 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
820
821 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
822 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
823 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
824 regular breakpoints.
825
826 * New targets
827
828 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
829
830 * D language support.
831 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
832 language.
833
834 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
835 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
836 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
837 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
838 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
839
840 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
841 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
842 conditions of the form:
843
844 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
845
846 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
847 interface mentioned above.
848
849 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
850
851 * C++ Improvements
852
853 ** Namespace Support
854
855 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
856 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
857 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
858 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
859 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
860
861 ** Bug Fixes
862
863 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
864 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
865 qualified name.
866
867 ** Cast Operators
868
869 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
870 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
871
872 * New targets
873
874 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
875 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
876
877 * New Simulators
878
879 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
880 Renesas RX rx
881
882 * Multi-program debugging.
883
884 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
885 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
886 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
887 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
888 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
889 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
890 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
891 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
892
893 * New tracing features
894
895 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
896
897 ** Trace state variables
898
899 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
900 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
901 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
902 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
903 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
904 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
905 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
906 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
907 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
908 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
909
910 ** Fast tracepoints
911
912 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
913 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
914 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
915 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
916 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
917 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
918 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
919 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
920 the regular trace command.
921
922 ** Disconnected tracing
923
924 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
925 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
926 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
927 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
928 connection is lost unexpectedly.
929
930 ** Trace files
931
932 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
933 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
934 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
935 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
936 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
937 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
938 <name>".
939
940 ** Circular trace buffer
941
942 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
943 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
944 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
945 not be available for all target agents.
946
947 * Changed commands
948
949 disassemble
950 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
951 the arguments to be comma-separated.
952
953 info variables
954 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
955 which only declare a variable are not shown.
956
957 source
958 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
959 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
960 support.
961
962 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
963 "set script-extension" (see below).
964
965 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
966
967 record save [<FILENAME>]
968 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
969 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
970
971 record restore <FILENAME>
972 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
973 earlier time, for replay debugging.
974
975 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
976 Add a new inferior.
977
978 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
979 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
980 inferior has loaded.
981
982 remove-inferior ID
983 Remove an inferior.
984
985 maint info program-spaces
986 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
987
988 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
989 show remote interrupt-sequence
990 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
991 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
992 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
993 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
994 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
995
996 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
997 show remote interrupt-on-connect
998 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
999 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1000 Linux kernel.
1001
1002 set remotebreak [on | off]
1003 show remotebreak
1004 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1005
1006 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1007 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1008
1009 info tvariables
1010 List trace state variables and their values.
1011
1012 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1013 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1014
1015 teval EXPR, ...
1016 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1017 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1018
1019 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1020 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1021
1022 * New expression syntax
1023
1024 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1025 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1026
1027 * New options
1028
1029 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1030 show follow-exec-mode
1031 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1032 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1033 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1034
1035 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1036 show default-collect
1037 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1038 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1039 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1040
1041 set disconnected-tracing
1042 show disconnected-tracing
1043 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1044 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1045 upon disconnection.
1046
1047 set circular-trace-buffer
1048 show circular-trace-buffer
1049 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1050 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1051 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1052 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1053
1054 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1055 show script-extension
1056 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1057 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1058 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1059 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1060 evaluation failed.
1061 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1062
1063 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1064 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1065 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1066 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1067 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1068 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1069 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1070 is on.
1071
1072 * Python API Improvements
1073
1074 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1075 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1076 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1077
1078 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1079 `is_base_class' attribute.
1080
1081 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1082
1083 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1084 evaluate an expression.
1085
1086 * New remote packets
1087
1088 QTDV
1089 Define a trace state variable.
1090
1091 qTV
1092 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1093
1094 QTDisconnected
1095 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1096
1097 QTBuffer:circular
1098 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1099
1100 qTfP, qTsP
1101 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1102
1103 * Bug fixes
1104
1105 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1106
1107 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1108 much more reliable. In particular:
1109 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1110 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1111 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1112 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1113 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1114 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1115 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1116 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1117 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1118 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1119 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1120 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1121 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1122 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1123 non-threaded programs.
1124
1125 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1126 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1127 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1128 executable program.
1129
1130 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1131
1132 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1133 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1134 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1135 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1136 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1137
1138 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1139 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1140 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1141 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1142 for tracepoint actions.
1143
1144 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1145 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1146 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1147
1148 * Process record and replay
1149
1150 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1151 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1152 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1153 execute commands.
1154
1155 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1156 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1157 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1158 reverse execution.
1159
1160 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1161 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1162 2.6.28 or later.
1163
1164 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1165 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1166 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1167 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1168 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1169 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1170 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1171 the installation instructions for more information.
1172
1173 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1174 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1175 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1176 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1177
1178 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1179 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1180
1181 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1182 now complete on file names.
1183
1184 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1185 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1186 For instance, consider:
1187
1188 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1189 # struct example variable;
1190 (gdb) p variable.
1191
1192 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1193 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1194
1195 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1196 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1197
1198 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1199 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1200 macros.
1201
1202 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1203 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1204 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1205
1206 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1207 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1208 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1209 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1210
1211 * New remote packets
1212
1213 qSearch:memory:
1214 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1215
1216 QStartNoAckMode
1217 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1218 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1219 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1220
1221 vKill
1222 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1223 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1224
1225 qXfer:osdata:read
1226 Obtains additional operating system information
1227
1228 qXfer:siginfo:read
1229 qXfer:siginfo:write
1230 Read or write additional signal information.
1231
1232 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1233
1234 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1235 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1236 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1237
1238 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1239 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1240
1241 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1242 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1243 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1244
1245 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1246 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1247
1248 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1249
1250 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1251
1252 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1253 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1254
1255 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1256 list of section offsets.
1257
1258 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1259 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1260 have also been fixed.
1261
1262 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1263 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1264 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1265
1266 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1267 example, given:
1268
1269 template<typename T> class C { };
1270 C<char const *> c;
1271
1272 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1273
1274 ptype C<char const *>
1275 ptype C<char const*>
1276 ptype C<const char *>
1277 ptype C<const char*>
1278
1279 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1280
1281 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1282 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1283
1284 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1285 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1286 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1287
1288 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1289 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1290
1291 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1292 gdbserver.
1293
1294 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1295 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1296
1297 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1298 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1299 as appropriate.
1300
1301 * Python scripting
1302
1303 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1304 available is determined at configure time.
1305
1306 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1307
1308 * Ada tasking support
1309
1310 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1311 been introduced:
1312
1313 info tasks
1314 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1315 info task N
1316 Print detailed information about task number N.
1317 task
1318 Print the task number of the current task.
1319 task N
1320 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1321
1322 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1323 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1324
1325 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1326
1327 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1328 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1329 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1330 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1331 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1332 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1333 below.
1334
1335 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1336 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1337 information.
1338
1339 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1340 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1341 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1342 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1343 more information.
1344
1345 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1346
1347 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1348 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1349 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1350 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1351 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1352
1353 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1354 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1355 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1356 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1357 --enable-targets configure option.
1358
1359 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1360
1361 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1362 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1363 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1364 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1365 section in the user manual for more information.
1366
1367 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1368 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1369 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1370 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1371 extensions on linux targets.
1372
1373 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1374
1375 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1376 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1377 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1378 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1379 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1380 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1381 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1382 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1383 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1384
1385 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1386 val1 [, val2, ...]
1387 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1388
1389 maint set python print-stack
1390 maint show python print-stack
1391 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1392
1393 python [CODE]
1394 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1395
1396 macro define
1397 macro list
1398 macro undef
1399 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1400 interactively.
1401
1402 info os processes
1403 Show operating system information about processes.
1404
1405 info inferiors
1406 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1407
1408 inferior NUM
1409 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1410
1411 detach inferior NUM
1412 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1413
1414 kill inferior NUM
1415 Kill inferior number NUM.
1416
1417 * New options
1418
1419 set spu stop-on-load
1420 show spu stop-on-load
1421 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1422
1423 set spu auto-flush-cache
1424 show spu auto-flush-cache
1425 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1426 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1427
1428 set sh calling-convention
1429 show sh calling-convention
1430 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1431
1432 set debug timestamp
1433 show debug timestamp
1434 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1435
1436 set disassemble-next-line
1437 show disassemble-next-line
1438 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1439 the debuggee stops.
1440
1441 set remote noack-packet
1442 show remote noack-packet
1443 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1444 under "New remote packets."
1445
1446 set remote query-attached-packet
1447 show remote query-attached-packet
1448 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1449
1450 set remote read-siginfo-object
1451 show remote read-siginfo-object
1452 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1453 packet.
1454
1455 set remote write-siginfo-object
1456 show remote write-siginfo-object
1457 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1458 packet.
1459
1460 set remote reverse-continue
1461 show remote reverse-continue
1462 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1463
1464 set remote reverse-step
1465 show remote reverse-step
1466 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1467
1468 set displaced-stepping
1469 show displaced-stepping
1470 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1471 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1472 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1473
1474 set debug displaced
1475 show debug displaced
1476 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1477
1478 maint set internal-error
1479 maint show internal-error
1480 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1481
1482 maint set internal-warning
1483 maint show internal-warning
1484 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1485
1486 set exec-wrapper
1487 show exec-wrapper
1488 unset exec-wrapper
1489 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1490
1491 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1492 show multiple-symbols
1493 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1494 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1495 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1496
1497 set breakpoint always-inserted
1498 show breakpoint always-inserted
1499 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1500 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1501 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1502
1503 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1504 show arm fallback-mode
1505 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1506 show arm force-mode
1507 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1508 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1509 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1510 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1511
1512 set disable-randomization
1513 show disable-randomization
1514 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1515 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1516 multiple debugging sessions.
1517
1518 set non-stop
1519 show non-stop
1520 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1521 a breakpoint.
1522
1523 set target-async
1524 show target-async
1525 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1526 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1527 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1528 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1529
1530 set target-wide-charset
1531 show target-wide-charset
1532 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1533 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1534
1535 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1536 show tcp auto-retry
1537 set tcp connect-timeout
1538 show tcp connect-timeout
1539 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1540 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1541 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1542
1543 set libthread-db-search-path
1544 show libthread-db-search-path
1545 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1546 libthread_db.
1547
1548 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1549 show schedule-multiple
1550 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1551 the current process.
1552
1553 set stack-cache
1554 show stack-cache
1555 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1556 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1557 affecting correctness.
1558
1559 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1560 show interactive-mode
1561 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1562 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1563 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1564 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1565 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1566
1567 * Removed commands
1568
1569 info forks
1570 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1571 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1572 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1573 command.
1574
1575 fork NUM
1576 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1577 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1578 alias for the `fork' command.
1579
1580 process PID
1581 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1582 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1583 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1584
1585 delete fork NUM
1586 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1587 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1588 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1589 fork' command.
1590
1591 detach fork NUM
1592 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1593 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1594 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1595 fork' command.
1596
1597 * New native configurations
1598
1599 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1600
1601 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1602
1603 * New targets
1604
1605 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1606 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1607 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1608 S+core 3 score-*-*
1609
1610 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1611 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1612
1613 * Removed commands
1614
1615 catch load
1616 catch unload
1617 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1618
1619 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1620
1621 * New native configurations
1622
1623 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1624 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1625
1626 * New targets
1627
1628 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1629 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1630
1631 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1632
1633 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1634 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1635 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1636 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1637
1638 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1639 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1640
1641 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1642 is resolved.
1643
1644 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1645 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1646 and in inlined functions.
1647
1648 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1649 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1650 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1651
1652 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1653
1654 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1655 registers on PowerPC targets.
1656
1657 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1658 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1659
1660 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1661 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1662
1663 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1664 extended-remote mode.
1665
1666 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1667 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1668 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1669 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1670
1671 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1672 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1673 target architectures.
1674
1675 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1676 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1677 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1678 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1679
1680 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1681 breakpoints now.
1682
1683 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1684 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1685 include:
1686 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1687 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1688 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1689 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1690 of an assignment
1691 - Improved command completion in Ada
1692 - Several bug fixes
1693
1694 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1695 process.
1696
1697 * New commands
1698
1699 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1700 show print frame-arguments
1701 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1702 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1703
1704 remote put
1705 remote get
1706 remote delete
1707 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1708
1709 * New MI commands
1710
1711 -target-file-put
1712 -target-file-get
1713 -target-file-delete
1714 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1715
1716 * New remote packets
1717
1718 vFile:open:
1719 vFile:close:
1720 vFile:pread:
1721 vFile:pwrite:
1722 vFile:unlink:
1723 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1724
1725 vAttach
1726 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1727 mode.
1728
1729 vRun
1730 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1731
1732 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1733
1734 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1735 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1736 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1737
1738 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1739 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1740 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1741
1742 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1743 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1744 is not supported.
1745
1746 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1747 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1748
1749 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1750 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1751
1752 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1753
1754 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1755 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1756 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1757
1758 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1759 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1760
1761 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1762 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1763 as strings.
1764
1765 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1766 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1767 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1768
1769 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1770 iWMMXt coprocessor.
1771
1772 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1773 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1774 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1775
1776 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1777
1778 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1779
1780 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1781 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1782 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1783
1784 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1785 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1786
1787 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1788 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1789 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1790 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1791 Windows and SymbianOS).
1792
1793 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1794 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1795
1796 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1797 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1798
1799 * New commands
1800
1801 set remoteflow
1802 show remoteflow
1803 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1804 when debugging using remote targets.
1805
1806 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1807 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1808 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1809 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1810 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1811 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1812 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1813
1814 set breakpoint auto-hw
1815 show breakpoint auto-hw
1816 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1817 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1818 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1819 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1820 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1821 including "next" and "finish".
1822
1823 catch exception
1824 catch exception unhandled
1825 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1826
1827 catch assert
1828 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1829
1830 set sysroot
1831 show sysroot
1832 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1833 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1834 an alias to "set sysroot".
1835
1836 info spu
1837 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1838 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1839 architecture.
1840
1841 * New native configurations
1842
1843 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1844
1845 set tdesc filename
1846 unset tdesc filename
1847 show tdesc filename
1848 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1849 not query the target for its built-in description.
1850
1851 * New targets
1852
1853 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1854 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1855 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1856
1857 * New remote packets
1858
1859 QPassSignals:
1860 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1861 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1862
1863 qXfer:features:read:
1864 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1865 features.
1866
1867 qXfer:spu:read:
1868 qXfer:spu:write:
1869 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1870 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1871
1872 qXfer:libraries:read:
1873 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1874 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1875 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1876 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1877
1878 * Removed targets
1879
1880 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1881
1882 alpha*-*-osf1*
1883 alpha*-*-osf2*
1884 d10v-*-*
1885 hppa*-*-hiux*
1886 i[34567]86-ncr-*
1887 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1888 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1889 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1890 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1891 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1892 i[34567]86-*-sco*
1893 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1894 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1895 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1896 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1897 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1898 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1899 i[34567]86-*-isc*
1900 m68*-cisco*-*
1901 m68*-tandem-*
1902 mips*-*-pe
1903 rs6000-*-lynxos*
1904 sh*-*-pe
1905
1906 * Other removed features
1907
1908 target abug
1909 target cpu32bug
1910 target est
1911 target rom68k
1912
1913 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1914
1915 target hms
1916 target e7000
1917 target sh3
1918 target sh3e
1919
1920 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1921 H8/300.
1922
1923 target ocd
1924
1925 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1926 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1927 interfaces.
1928
1929 DWARF 1 support
1930
1931 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1932 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1933
1934 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1935
1936 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1937 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1938 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1939 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1940
1941 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1942
1943 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1944 in debugging information.
1945
1946 Scheme support
1947
1948 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1949 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1950
1951 set mips stack-arg-size
1952 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1953
1954 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1955
1956 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1957
1958 * New targets
1959
1960 Xtensa xtensa-elf
1961 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1962
1963 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1964 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1965 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1966
1967 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1968 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1969 supported.
1970
1971 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1972 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1973
1974 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1975 stub provides the required support.
1976
1977 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1978 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1979
1980 * New commands
1981
1982 set substitute-path
1983 unset substitute-path
1984 show substitute-path
1985 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1986 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1987 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1988 between compilation and debugging.
1989
1990 set trace-commands
1991 show trace-commands
1992 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1993 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1994 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1995
1996 * REMOVED features
1997
1998 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1999
2000 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2001 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2002
2003 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2004
2005 * New remote packets
2006
2007 qSupported:
2008 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2009 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2010 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2011 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2012 target.
2013
2014 qXfer:auxv:read:
2015 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2016 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2017
2018 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2019 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2020 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2021
2022 vFlashErase:
2023 vFlashWrite:
2024 vFlashDone:
2025 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2026
2027 * Removed remote packets
2028
2029 qPart:auxv:read:
2030 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2031 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2032
2033 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2034
2035 * New targets
2036
2037 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2038
2039 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2040
2041 * New commands
2042
2043 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2044 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2045
2046 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2047
2048 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2049
2050 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2051 previously saved state.
2052
2053 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2054
2055 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2056
2057 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2058 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2059
2060 info forks List forks of the user program that
2061 are available to be debugged.
2062
2063 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2064 forks of the user program that are
2065 available to be debugged.
2066
2067 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2068 that are available to be debugged (and
2069 kill the forked process).
2070
2071 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2072 that are available to be debugged (and
2073 allow the process to continue).
2074
2075 * New architecture
2076
2077 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2078
2079 * Improved Windows host support
2080
2081 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2082 native console support, and remote communications using either
2083 network sockets or serial ports.
2084
2085 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2086
2087 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2088 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2089 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2090 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2091 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2092 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2093
2094 * REMOVED features
2095
2096 The ARM rdi-share module.
2097
2098 The Netware NLM debug server.
2099
2100 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2101
2102 * New native configurations
2103
2104 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2105 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2106
2107 * New targets
2108
2109 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2110
2111 * New command line options
2112
2113 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2114 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2115 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2116 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2117 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2118 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2119 with the --command (-x) option.
2120
2121 * Deprecated commands removed
2122
2123 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2124 removed:
2125
2126 Command Replacement
2127 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2128 othernames set arm disassembler
2129 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2130 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2131 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2132 regs info registers
2133
2134 * New BSD user-level threads support
2135
2136 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2137 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2138 configurations are:
2139
2140 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2141 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2142 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2143
2144 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2145 are not yet supported.
2146
2147 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2148 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2149
2150 * REMOVED configurations and files
2151
2152 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2153 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2154 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2155
2156 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2157
2158 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2159 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2160 behavior.
2161
2162 * VAX floating point support
2163
2164 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2165
2166 * User-defined command support
2167
2168 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2169 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2170 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2171
2172 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2173
2174 * New command line option
2175
2176 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2177 debugging.
2178
2179 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2180
2181 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2182 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2183 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2184 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2185 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2186
2187 * Internationalization
2188
2189 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2190 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2191 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2192
2193 * Ada
2194
2195 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2196 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2197 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2198
2199 * New native configurations
2200
2201 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2202
2203 * Remote 'p' packet
2204
2205 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2206 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2207
2208 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2209
2210 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2211 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2212 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2213 i386 application).
2214
2215 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2216 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2217 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2218 configurations:
2219
2220 hppa-*-hpux
2221 ia64-*-aix
2222 mips-*-irix*
2223 *-*-lynx
2224 mips-*-linux-gnu
2225 sds protocol
2226 xdr protocol
2227 powerpc bdm protocol
2228
2229 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2230 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2231
2232 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2233
2234 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2235 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2236 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2237 permanently REMOVED.
2238
2239 h8300-*-*
2240 mcore-*-*
2241 mn10300-*-*
2242 ns32k-*-*
2243 sh64-*-*
2244 v850-*-*
2245
2246 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2247
2248 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2249
2250 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2251 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2252 been fixed.
2253
2254 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2255
2256 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2257 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2258 IRIX long double values).
2259
2260 * VAX and "next"
2261
2262 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2263 command. This problem has been fixed.
2264
2265 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2266
2267 * Fix for ``many threads''
2268
2269 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2270 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2271 error message:
2272
2273 ptrace: No such process.
2274 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2275
2276 This problem has been fixed.
2277
2278 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2279
2280 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2281 GDB to dump core).
2282
2283 * New ``start'' command.
2284
2285 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2286
2287 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2288
2289 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2290 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2291 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2292
2293 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2294 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2295 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2296 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2297 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2298 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2299 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2300 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2301 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2302
2303 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2304
2305 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2306 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2307 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2308 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2309 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2310
2311 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2312 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2313 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2314
2315 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2316
2317 * New native configurations
2318
2319 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2320 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2321 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2322 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2323 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2324 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2325 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2326
2327 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2328
2329 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2330 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2331 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2332 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2333 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2334 work, was also included.
2335
2336 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2337 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2338
2339 h8300-*-*
2340 mcore-*-*
2341 mn10300-*-*
2342 ns32k-*-*
2343 sh64-*-*
2344 v850-*-*
2345 xstormy16-*-*
2346
2347 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2348 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2349
2350 * REMOVED configurations and files
2351
2352 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2353 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2354 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2355 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2356 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2357 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2358 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2359 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2360 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2361 sonymips mips-sony-*
2362 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2363
2364 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2365
2366 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2367
2368 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2369 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2370 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2371 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2372 with GDB".
2373
2374 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2375
2376 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2377 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2378 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2379 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2380 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2381 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2382 are created.
2383
2384 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2385
2386 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2387
2388 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2389 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2390 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2391
2392 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2393
2394 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2395 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2396
2397 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2398
2399 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2400 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2401 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2402
2403 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2404
2405 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2406 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2407
2408 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2409
2410 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2411 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2412 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2413
2414 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2415
2416 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2417 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2418 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2419
2420 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2421
2422 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2423
2424 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2425 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2426
2427 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2428
2429 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2430 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2431 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2432 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2433
2434 * Revised SPARC target
2435
2436 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2437 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2438 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2439 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2440 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2441
2442 * New C++ demangler
2443
2444 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2445 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2446 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2447 programs.
2448
2449 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2450
2451 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2452 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2453 encountered these.
2454
2455 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2456
2457 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2458 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2459 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2460 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2461 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2462 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2463 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2464 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2465 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2466
2467 * New native configurations
2468
2469 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2470 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2471 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2472 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2473 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2474
2475 * New debugging protocols
2476
2477 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2478
2479 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2480
2481 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2482 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2483 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2484
2485 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2486
2487 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2488 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2489 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2490 permanently REMOVED.
2491
2492 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2493 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2494 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2495 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2496 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2497 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2498 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2499 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2500 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2501 sonymips mips-sony-*
2502 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2503
2504 * REMOVED configurations and files
2505
2506 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2507 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2508 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2509 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2510 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2511 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2512 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2513 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2514 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2515 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2516 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2517 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2518 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2519 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2520 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2521 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2522 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2523
2524 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2525
2526 * Objective-C
2527
2528 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2529 integrated into GDB.
2530
2531 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2532
2533 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2534 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2535 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2536 backtraces.
2537
2538 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2539 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2540 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2541
2542 * Hosted file I/O.
2543
2544 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2545 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2546 remote protocol documentation for details.
2547
2548 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2549
2550 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2551 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2552 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2553 ppc32 on ppc64).
2554
2555 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2556
2557 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2558 per-thread variables.
2559
2560 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2561
2562 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2563 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2564
2565 * Separate debug info.
2566
2567 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2568 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2569 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2570 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2571 and optional debug files.
2572
2573 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2574
2575 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2576 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2577 debugger.
2578
2579 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2580 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2581
2582 * Java
2583
2584 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2585 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2586 considered "useable".
2587
2588 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2589
2590 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2591 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2592 kernel.
2593
2594 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2595
2596 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2597 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2598
2599 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2600
2601 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2602 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2603 command.
2604
2605 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2606
2607 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2608 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2609
2610 * Profiling support
2611
2612 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2613 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2614 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2615 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2616 data, for more informative profiling results.
2617
2618 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2619
2620 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2621 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2622 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2623
2624 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2625 removed.
2626
2627 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2628 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2629 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2630 in a subsequent -var-update.
2631
2632 * New native configurations.
2633
2634 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2635
2636 * Multi-arched targets.
2637
2638 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2639 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2640
2641 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2642
2643 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2644 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2645 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2646 permanently REMOVED.
2647
2648 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2649 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2650 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2651 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2652 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2653 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2654 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2655 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2656 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2657 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2658 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2659 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2660
2661 * REMOVED configurations and files
2662
2663 V850EA ISA
2664 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2665 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2666 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2667 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2668 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2669 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2670 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2671 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2672 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2673 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2674 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2675 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2676 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2677
2678 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2679
2680 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2681 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2682 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2683 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2684 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2685
2686 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2687
2688 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2689
2690 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2691 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2692 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2693 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2694 shared libs like mad''.
2695
2696 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2697
2698 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2699 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2700 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2701 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2702
2703 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2704
2705 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2706 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2707 they expand.
2708
2709 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2710 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2711
2712 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2713 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2714
2715 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2716 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2717 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2718 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2719
2720 * Multi-arched targets.
2721
2722 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2723 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2724 NEC V850 v850-*-*
2725 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2726 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2727 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2728
2729 * New targets.
2730
2731 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2732
2733
2734 * New native configurations
2735
2736 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2737 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2738 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2739 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2740
2741 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2742
2743 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2744 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2745 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2746 permanently REMOVED.
2747
2748 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2749 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2750 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2751 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2752 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2753 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2754 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2755 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2756 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2757 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2758 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2759 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2760 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2761
2762 * OBSOLETE languages
2763
2764 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2765
2766 * REMOVED configurations and files
2767
2768 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2769 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2770 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2771 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2772 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2773
2774 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2775
2776 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2777
2778 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2779 commands. The default is 1024.
2780
2781 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2782
2783 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2784
2785 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2786
2787 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2788 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2789 from a file into memory (restore).
2790
2791 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2792
2793 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2794 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2795 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2796
2797 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2798
2799 * New targets.
2800
2801 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2802
2803 * Bug fixes
2804
2805 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2806 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2807 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2808
2809 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2810 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2811 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2812
2813 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2814 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2815 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2816
2817 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2818 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2819 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2820
2821 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2822
2823 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2824
2825 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2826 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2827 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2828 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2829 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2830 (notably embedded) targets.
2831
2832 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2833
2834 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2835 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2836 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2837 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2838
2839 * New command line option
2840
2841 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2842
2843 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2844
2845 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2846 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2847 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2848 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2849 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2850 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2851 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2852 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2853 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2854 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2855
2856 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2857
2858 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2859 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2860
2861 * New native configurations
2862
2863 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2864 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2865 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2866 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2867
2868 * New targets
2869
2870 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2871
2872 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2873
2874 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2875 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2876 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2877 permanently REMOVED.
2878
2879 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2880 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2881 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2882 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2883 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2884
2885 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2886
2887 * REMOVED configurations and files
2888
2889 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2890 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2891 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2892 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2893 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2894 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2895 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2896 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2897 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2898 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2899 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2900 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2901 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2902
2903 * Changes to command line processing
2904
2905 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2906 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2907
2908 * Changes to key bindings
2909
2910 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2911
2912 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2913
2914 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2915
2916 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2917 corrupted.
2918
2919 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2920
2921 Numerous documentation fixes.
2922
2923 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2924
2925 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2926
2927 * New native configurations
2928
2929 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2930 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2931 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2932 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2933 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2934 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2935
2936 * New targets
2937
2938 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2939 CRIS cris-axis
2940 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2941
2942 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2943
2944 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2945 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2946 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2947 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2948 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2949 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2950 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2951 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2952 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2953 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2954 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2955 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2956 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2957 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2958
2959 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2960 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2961
2962 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2963 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2964 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2965 permanently REMOVED.
2966
2967 * REMOVED configurations and files
2968
2969 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2970 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2971 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2972 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2973 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
2974 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
2975
2976 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2977
2978 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2979 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2980 present.
2981
2982 * Other news:
2983
2984 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2985
2986 * The MI enabled by default.
2987
2988 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2989 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2990 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2991 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2992 which is now deprecated.
2993
2994 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2995
2996 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2997 main features are supported:
2998
2999 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3000
3001 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3002 extension;
3003
3004 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3005
3006 - a Pascal expression parser.
3007
3008 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3009
3010 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3011
3012 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3013
3014 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3015 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3016
3017 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3018
3019 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3020
3021 * Changes in completion.
3022
3023 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3024 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3025 users expect at the shell prompt.
3026
3027 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3028 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3029 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3030 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3031 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3032 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3033 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3034
3035 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3036
3037 * New platform-independent commands:
3038
3039 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3040 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3041 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3042
3043 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3044
3045 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3046 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3047 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3048
3049 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3050
3051 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3052 multi-threaded programs though.
3053
3054 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3055
3056 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3057
3058 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3059 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3060 supported.)
3061
3062 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3063
3064 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3065 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3066 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3067 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3068 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3069 registers.
3070
3071 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3072 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3073 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3074
3075 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3076
3077 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3078 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3079
3080 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3081 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3082 IDT.
3083
3084 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3085 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3086 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3087 a given linear address.
3088
3089 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3090 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3091 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3092
3093 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3094
3095 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3096
3097 * Changes in documentation.
3098
3099 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3100 Documentation License.
3101
3102 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3103 manual.
3104
3105 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3106
3107 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3108 manual.
3109
3110 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3111 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3112 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3113
3114 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3115
3116 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3117 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3118 contents of this file.
3119
3120 * gdba.el deleted
3121
3122 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3123
3124 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3125
3126 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3127
3128 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3129 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3130 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3131 greater level of detail.
3132
3133 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3134
3135 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3136 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3137 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3138 written.
3139
3140 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3141
3142 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3143 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3144 machines ``out of the box''.
3145
3146 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3147 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3148 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3149 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3150 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3151
3152 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3153 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3154 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3155 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3156 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3157
3158 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3159 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3160 also works.
3161
3162 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3163 GDB.
3164
3165 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3166 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3167 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3168 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3169
3170 * New native configurations
3171
3172 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3173 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3174
3175 * New targets
3176
3177 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3178 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3179 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3180 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3181
3182 * OBSOLETE configurations
3183
3184 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3185 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3186 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3187 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3188 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3189
3190 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3191 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3192 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3193 be permanently REMOVED.
3194
3195 * Gould support removed
3196
3197 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3198
3199 * New features for SVR4
3200
3201 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3202 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3203 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3204
3205 * Many C++ enhancements
3206
3207 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3208 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3209
3210 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3211
3212 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3213 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3214 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3215 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3216
3217 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3218 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3219
3220 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3221
3222 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3223 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3224 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3225
3226 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3227 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3228
3229 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3230
3231 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3232 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3233 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3234
3235 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3236
3237 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3238 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3239 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3240
3241 * ``apropos'' command added.
3242
3243 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3244 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3245 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3246
3247 * New MI interface
3248
3249 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3250 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3251 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3252 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3253 enabled by configuring with:
3254
3255 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3256
3257 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3258
3259 * New native configurations
3260
3261 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3262 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3263 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3264
3265 * New targets
3266
3267 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3268 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3269 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3270
3271 * OBSOLETE configurations
3272
3273 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3274
3275 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3276 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3277 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3278 be permanently REMOVED.
3279
3280 * ANSI/ISO C
3281
3282 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3283 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3284 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3285 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3286 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3287 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3288 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3289 already.
3290
3291 * Readline 2.2
3292
3293 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3294
3295 * set extension-language
3296
3297 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3298 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3299 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3300 set extension-language .c c++
3301 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3302 and their associated languages.
3303
3304 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3305
3306 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3307 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3308 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3309
3310 set processor NAME
3311
3312 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3313 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3314
3315 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3316 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3317 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3318 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3319 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3320 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3321 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3322 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3323 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3324 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3325 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3326
3327 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3328 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3329 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3330 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3331
3332 * HP-UX support
3333
3334 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3335 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3336 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3337 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3338 for xdb and dbx commands.
3339
3340 * Catchpoints
3341
3342 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3343 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3344 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3345
3346 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3347 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3348 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3349
3350 * Debugging across forks
3351
3352 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3353 in the inferior.
3354
3355 * TUI
3356
3357 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3358 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3359 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3360
3361 * GDB remote protocol additions
3362
3363 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3364 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3365 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3366 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3367
3368 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3369 full 64-bit address. The command
3370
3371 set remoteaddresssize 32
3372
3373 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3374 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3375 will be discarded.
3376
3377 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3378 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3379
3380 maint packet heythere
3381
3382 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3383 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3384 time.
3385
3386 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3387 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3388 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3389
3390 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3391
3392 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3393 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3394 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3395
3396 * mask-address variable for Mips
3397
3398 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3399 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3400 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3401
3402 * Higher serial baud rates
3403
3404 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3405 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3406 to achieve all of these rates.)
3407
3408 * i960 simulator
3409
3410 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3411 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3412
3413
3414 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3415
3416 * New native configurations
3417
3418 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3419 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3420 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3421 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3422 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3423 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3424 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3425
3426 * New targets
3427
3428 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3429 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3430 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3431 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3432 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3433 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3434 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3435 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3436 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3437 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3438 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3439
3440 * New debugging protocols
3441
3442 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3443 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3444 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3445 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3446 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3447 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3448
3449 * DWARF 2
3450
3451 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3452 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3453 information.
3454
3455 * Java frontend
3456
3457 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3458 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3459
3460 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3461
3462 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3463 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3464 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3465
3466 * Live range splitting
3467
3468 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3469 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3470 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3471
3472 * Hurd support
3473
3474 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3475 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3476
3477 * ARM Thumb support
3478
3479 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3480 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3481 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3482 accordingly.
3483
3484 * MIPS16 support
3485
3486 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3487 instruction set.
3488
3489 * Overlay support
3490
3491 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3492 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3493 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3494 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3495 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3496 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3497
3498 * info symbol
3499
3500 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3501 the symbol at the specified address.
3502
3503 * Trace support
3504
3505 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3506 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3507 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3508 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3509 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3510
3511 * MIPS simulator
3512
3513 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3514 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3515 of most MIPS variants.
3516
3517 * Sparc simulator
3518
3519 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3520 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3521 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3522
3523 * set architecture
3524
3525 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3526 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3527 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3528 the possible architectures.
3529
3530 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3531
3532 * New native configurations
3533
3534 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3535 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3536 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3537 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3538 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3539 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3540
3541 * New targets
3542
3543 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3544 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3545 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3546 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3547 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3548 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3549 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3550
3551 * PowerPC simulator
3552
3553 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3554 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3555 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3556 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3557 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3558
3559 * Solaris 2.5
3560
3561 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3562
3563 * Windows 95/NT native
3564
3565 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3566 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3567 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3568 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3569 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3570
3571 * dont-repeat command
3572
3573 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3574 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3575 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3576 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3577
3578 * Send break instead of ^C
3579
3580 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3581 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3582 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3583
3584 * Remote protocol timeout
3585
3586 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3587 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3588 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3589
3590 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3591
3592 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3593 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3594 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3595 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3596 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3597
3598 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3599 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3600 automatically on hpux10.
3601
3602 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3603
3604 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3605
3606 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3607
3608 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3609 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3610 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3611 every character. The default value is 1050.
3612
3613 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3614
3615 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3616 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3617 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3618 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3619 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3620 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3621
3622 * Speedups for remote debugging
3623
3624 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3625 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3626 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3627
3628 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3629
3630 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3631 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3632
3633 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3634
3635 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3636
3637 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3638 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3639
3640 * Remote targets use caching
3641
3642 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3643 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3644 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3645 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3646 off' turns the the data cache off.
3647
3648 * Remote targets may have threads
3649
3650 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3651 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3652 gdb/remote.c for details.
3653
3654 * NetROM support
3655
3656 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3657 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3658 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3659 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3660 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3661 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3662 sequence is something like
3663
3664 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3665 load <prog>
3666 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3667
3668 * Macintosh host
3669
3670 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3671 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3672 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3673 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3674 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3675 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3676 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3677 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3678
3679 * Autoconf
3680
3681 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3682 but does simplify configuration and building.
3683
3684 * hpux10
3685
3686 GDB now supports hpux10.
3687
3688 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3689
3690 * New native configurations
3691
3692 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3693 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3694 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3695 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3696
3697 * New targets
3698
3699 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3700 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3701 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3702 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3703 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3704
3705 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3706
3707 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3708 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3709 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3710 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3711 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3712
3713 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3714
3715 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3716 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3717 trivial example:
3718 define adder
3719 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3720
3721 To execute the command use:
3722 adder 1 2 3
3723
3724 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3725 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3726 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3727
3728 * New `if' and `while' commands
3729
3730 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3731 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3732 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3733 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3734 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3735 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3736 if the expression is zero.
3737
3738 * Fortran source language mode
3739
3740 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3741 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3742 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3743 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3744 Fortran compilers.
3745
3746 * Better HPUX support
3747
3748 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3749 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3750 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3751 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3752 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3753
3754 adb -w a.out
3755 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3756 control-d
3757
3758 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3759 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3760
3761 adb -w a.out
3762 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3763 control-d
3764
3765 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3766 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3767 external linkage.
3768
3769 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3770 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3771
3772 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3773
3774 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3775 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3776 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3777 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3778 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3779 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3780
3781 * New DOS host serial code
3782
3783 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3784 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3785 a PC's serial port.
3786
3787 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3788
3789 * New "complete" command
3790
3791 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3792 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3793
3794 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3795
3796 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3797 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3798
3799 * Breakpoint hit counts
3800
3801 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3802 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3803 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3804 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3805 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3806 that breakpoint.
3807
3808 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3809
3810 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3811 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3812 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3813
3814 * Shared library breakpoints
3815
3816 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3817 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3818
3819 * Hardware watchpoints
3820
3821 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3822 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3823
3824 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3825
3826 * Annotations
3827
3828 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3829 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3830
3831 * Improved Irix 5 support
3832
3833 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3834
3835 * Improved HPPA support
3836
3837 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3838
3839 * New native configurations
3840
3841 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3842 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3843 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3844 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3845
3846 * New targets
3847
3848 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3849 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3850 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3851
3852 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3853
3854 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3855 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3856
3857 * Fixes
3858
3859 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3860 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3861
3862 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3863
3864 * Irix 5 is now supported
3865
3866 * HPPA support
3867
3868 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3869 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3870 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3871 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3872 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3873
3874
3875 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3876
3877 * User visible changes:
3878
3879 * Remote Debugging
3880
3881 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3882 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3883 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3884 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3885 debugging info for the mips target).
3886
3887 * DEC Alpha native support
3888
3889 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3890 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3891 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3892 Alpha-specific notes.
3893
3894 * Preliminary thread implementation
3895
3896 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3897
3898 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3899
3900 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3901 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3902 for details).
3903
3904 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3905
3906 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3907 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3908 call methods, ...etc.
3909
3910 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3911
3912 * User visible changes:
3913
3914 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3915 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3916 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3917 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3918
3919 Filename completion now works.
3920
3921 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3922 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3923 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3924
3925 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3926 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3927 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3928 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3929 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3930
3931 * DEC alpha support
3932
3933 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3934 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3935
3936
3937 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3938
3939 * Testsuite
3940
3941 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3942 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3943 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3944
3945 * C++ demangling
3946
3947 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3948 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3949 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3950 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3951 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3952
3953 * Simulators
3954
3955 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3956 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3957 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3958
3959 * New targets supported
3960
3961 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3962 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3963 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3964 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3965 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3966
3967 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3968 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3969 GO32 memory extender.
3970
3971 * New remote protocols
3972
3973 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3974
3975 * New source languages supported
3976
3977 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3978 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3979 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3980
3981
3982 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3983
3984 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3985
3986 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3987 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3988 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3989 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3990 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3991 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3992
3993 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3994
3995 * Faster and better demangling
3996
3997 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3998 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3999 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4000 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4001 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4002 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4003 symbol lookups.
4004
4005 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4006 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4007 compiler does not actually implement.
4008
4009 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4010
4011 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4012 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4013 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4014 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4015 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4016 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4017 fix.
4018
4019 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4020 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4021
4022 * Improved configure script
4023
4024 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4025 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4026 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4027 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4028
4029 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4030 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4031 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4032 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4033 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4034 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4035
4036 * Documentation improvements
4037
4038 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4039 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4040 before submitting changes.
4041
4042 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4043 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4044 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4045 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4046 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4047
4048 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4049 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4050 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4051 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4052 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4053 around this problem.
4054
4055 * New features
4056
4057 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4058 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4059 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4060 the target program.
4061
4062 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4063 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4064
4065 * New native hosts supported
4066
4067 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4068 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4069
4070 * New targets supported
4071
4072 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4073
4074 * New file formats supported
4075
4076 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4077 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4078
4079 * Major bug fixes
4080
4081 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4082
4083 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4084 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4085
4086 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4087 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4088 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4089
4090 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4091 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4092
4093 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4094 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4095 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4096 libraries.
4097
4098 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4099 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4100 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4101 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4102 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4103
4104 * Internal improvements
4105
4106 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4107 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4108
4109 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4110 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4111 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4112 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4113 shared code that handles any of them.
4114
4115 * New command line options
4116
4117 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4118
4119 * Mmalloc licensing
4120
4121 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4122 General Public License.
4123
4124 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4125
4126 * Host/native/target split
4127
4128 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4129 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4130 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4131 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4132 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4133
4134 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4135 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4136 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4137 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4138 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4139 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4140 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4141
4142 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4143 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4144 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4145
4146 * New hosts supported
4147
4148 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4149 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4150 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4151
4152 * New targets supported
4153
4154 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4155 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4156
4157 * New native hosts supported
4158
4159 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4160 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4161 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4162
4163 * New file formats supported
4164
4165 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4166 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4167 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4168
4169 * New commands
4170
4171 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4172 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4173 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4174
4175 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4176
4177 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4178 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4179 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4180 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4181
4182 * C++ improvements
4183
4184 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4185 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4186 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4187
4188 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4189
4190 * Major bug fixes
4191
4192 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4193 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4194 by the compiler.
4195
4196 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4197 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4198
4199 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4200 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4201 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4202 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4203 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4204 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4205
4206 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4207 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4208 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4209 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4210
4211 * AMD 29k support
4212
4213 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4214 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4215 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4216 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4217 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4218
4219 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4220 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4221 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4222 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4223
4224 * Remote interfaces
4225
4226 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4227 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4228 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4229 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4230 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4231 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4232 each instruction being stepped through.
4233
4234 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4235 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4236
4237 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4238 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4239 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4240 processor with a serial port.
4241
4242 * Configuration
4243
4244 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4245 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4246 supported, and what files each one uses.
4247
4248 * Library changes
4249
4250 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4251 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4252 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4253 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4254
4255 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4256 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4257 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4258 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4259
4260 * Documentation
4261
4262 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4263 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4264 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4265 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4266 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4267 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4268
4269 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4270
4271
4272 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4273
4274 * Better support for C++ function names
4275
4276 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4277 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4278 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4279 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4280 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4281
4282 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4283 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4284 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4285 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4286 for the list of formats.
4287
4288 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4289
4290 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4291 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4292 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4293 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4294 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4295 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4296 this problem.)
4297
4298 * New 'maintenance' command
4299
4300 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4301 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4302 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4303
4304 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4305 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4306 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4307 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4308 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4309 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4310
4311 The following commands are new:
4312
4313 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4314 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4315 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4316
4317 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4318
4319 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4320 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4321 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4322 read after argv processing.
4323
4324 * New hosts supported
4325
4326 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4327
4328 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4329
4330 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4331 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4332 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4333 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4334 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4335 It costs extra.
4336
4337 * New targets supported
4338
4339 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4340
4341 * More smarts about finding #include files
4342
4343 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4344 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4345 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4346 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4347 the one that contains your sources.
4348
4349 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4350 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4351 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4352
4353 * Interesting infernals change
4354
4355 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4356 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4357 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4358 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4359
4360 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4361
4362 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4363 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4364 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4365
4366 See the ChangeLog for details.
4367
4368 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4369
4370 * New machines supported (host and target)
4371
4372 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4373
4374 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4375
4376 * New malloc package
4377
4378 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4379 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4380 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4381 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4382 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4383 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4384
4385 * info proc
4386
4387 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4388 'help info proc' for details.
4389
4390 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4391
4392 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4393 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4394 possible.
4395
4396 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4397
4398 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4399 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4400 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4401 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4402 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4403 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4404
4405 * Cross byte order fixes
4406
4407 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4408 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4409
4410 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4411
4412 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4413 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4414 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4415 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4416 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4417 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4418 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4419 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4420 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4421 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4422
4423 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4424 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4425 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4426 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4427
4428 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4429 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4430 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4431 use is:
4432
4433 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4434
4435 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4436 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4437 shared across multiple host platforms.
4438
4439 * longjmp() handling
4440
4441 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4442 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4443 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4444 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4445
4446 * Solaris 2.0
4447
4448 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4449 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4450 reading symbols.
4451
4452 * Bug fixes
4453
4454 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4455 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4456 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4457
4458 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4459
4460 * New machines supported (host and target)
4461
4462 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4463 (except core files)
4464 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4465 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4466
4467 * New machines supported (target)
4468
4469 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4470
4471 * C++ support
4472
4473 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4474 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4475 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4476
4477 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4478 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4479 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4480 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4481 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4482 released.
4483
4484 * New features for SVR4
4485
4486 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4487 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4488 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4489
4490 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4491 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4492 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4493
4494 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4495 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4496
4497 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4498
4499 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4500 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4501 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4502 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4503 same code linked statically.
4504
4505 * New Getopt
4506
4507 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4508 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4509 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4510 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4511 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4512 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4513
4514 * Bugs fixed
4515
4516 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4517 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4518 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4519
4520
4521 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4522
4523 * New machines supported (host and target)
4524
4525 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4526 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4527 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4528
4529 * Almost SCO Unix support
4530
4531 We had hoped to support:
4532 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4533 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4534 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4535 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4536
4537 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4538
4539 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4540 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4541 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4542 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4543 reqired (if any).
4544
4545 * New Readline
4546
4547 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4548 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4549 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4550
4551 * Bugs fixed
4552
4553 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4554 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4555 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4556
4557 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4558
4559 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4560 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4561 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4562
4563 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4564 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4565 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4566 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4567 version 2.
4568
4569 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4570 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4571 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4572 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4573 situation somewhat.
4574
4575 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4576 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4577 methods.
4578
4579 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4580 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4581 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4582
4583
4584 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4585
4586 * Improved configuration
4587
4588 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4589 Porting BFD is simpler.
4590
4591 * Stepping improved
4592
4593 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4594 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4595 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4596 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4597
4598 * Bug fixing
4599
4600 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4601
4602 * New host supported (not target)
4603
4604 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4605
4606
4607 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4608
4609 * Multiple source language support
4610
4611 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4612 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4613 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4614 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4615 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4616 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4617
4618 * GDB and Modula-2
4619
4620 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4621 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4622 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4623 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4624
4625 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4626 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4627 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4628
4629 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4630 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4631
4632 * set write on/off
4633
4634 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4635 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4636 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4637 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4638 effect immediately.
4639
4640 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4641
4642 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4643 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4644 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4645 examining core files.
4646
4647 * set listsize
4648
4649 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4650 The default is 10.
4651
4652 * New machines supported (host and target)
4653
4654 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4655 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4656 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4657
4658 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4659
4660 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4661
4662 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4663
4664 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4665 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4666 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4667
4668 * New remote interfaces
4669
4670 AMD 29000 Adapt
4671 AMD 29000 Minimon
4672
4673
4674 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4675
4676 * New Facilities
4677
4678 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4679
4680 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4681 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4682 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4683 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4684 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4685 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4686 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4687 stub on the target system.
4688
4689 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4690
4691 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4692 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4693 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4694
4695 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4696 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4697
4698
4699 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4700
4701 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4702 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4703
4704 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4705 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4706 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4707
4708 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4709 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4710 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4711 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4712
4713 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4714 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4715 it is already running. Default is ON.
4716
4717 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4718 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4719 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4720 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4721 Default is ON.
4722
4723 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4724 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4725 or the value of the environment variable
4726 GDBHISTFILE.
4727
4728 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4729 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4730 HISTSIZE.
4731
4732 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4733 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4734 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4735
4736 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4737 history expansion will be performed on
4738 command line input. The default is OFF.
4739
4740 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4741 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4742 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4743
4744 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4745 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4746 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4747 variable TERM.
4748
4749 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4750 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4751 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4752 variable TERM.
4753
4754 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4755 ``set width'' instead.
4756
4757 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4758 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4759 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4760 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4761
4762 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4763 is OFF.
4764
4765 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4766 "raw" form if off.
4767
4768 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4769 like instructions.
4770
4771 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4772
4773
4774 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4775
4776 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4777 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4778 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4779 window.
4780
4781
4782 * Support for Shared Libraries
4783
4784 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4785 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4786 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4787 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4788 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4789 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4790 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4791 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4792
4793 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4794 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4795 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4796
4797 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4798
4799
4800 * Watchpoints
4801
4802 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4803 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4804 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4805 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4806 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4807 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4808
4809 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4810
4811 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4812
4813 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4814 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4815 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4816
4817
4818 * C++ multiple inheritance
4819
4820 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4821 for C++ programs.
4822
4823 * C++ exception handling
4824
4825 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4826 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4827 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4828 handler's context).
4829
4830 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4831 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4832 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4833
4834 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4835 current stack frame.
4836
4837
4838 * Minor command changes
4839
4840 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4841 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4842 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4843
4844 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4845 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4846 frames without printing.
4847
4848 * New directory command
4849
4850 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4851 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4852 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4853 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4854 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4855
4856 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4857
4858 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4859 for more details.
4860
4861 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4862 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4863 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4864 where the program that you are debugging will run.
This page took 0.129377 seconds and 5 git commands to generate.