2013-11-07 Phil Muldoon <pmuldoon@redhat.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
6 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
9 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
17 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
19 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
21 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
35 * Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
39
40 * New targets
41
42 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
43 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
44 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
45
46 * Removed native configurations
47
48 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
49 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
50
51 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
53 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
54 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
55 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
58
59 * New commands:
60 catch rethrow
61 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
62 maint check-psymtabs
63 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
64 maint check-symtabs
65 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
66 maint expand-symtabs
67 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
68
69 show configuration
70 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
71
72 maint set|show per-command
73 maint set|show per-command space
74 maint set|show per-command time
75 maint set|show per-command symtab
76 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
77
78 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
79 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
80 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
81 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
82 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
83
84 * New options
85
86 set debug symfile off|on
87 show debug symfile
88 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
89 symbol tables within those files
90
91 set print raw frame-arguments
92 show print raw frame-arguments
93 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
94 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
95
96 set remote trace-status-packet
97 show remote trace-status-packet
98 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
99
100 set debug nios2
101 show debug nios2
102 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
103
104 set range-stepping
105 show range-stepping
106 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
107
108 set startup-with-shell
109 show startup-with-shell
110 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
111 directly.
112
113 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
114 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
115 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
116 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
117 "set height 0".
118
119 * New command-line options
120 --configuration
121 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
122
123 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
124 buffer in Common Trace Format.
125
126 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
127 GDB command gcore.
128
129 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
130
131 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
132 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
133
134 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
135 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
136
137 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
138 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
139 due to an uncaught signal.
140
141 * MI changes
142
143 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
144 Trace Format now.
145
146 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
147
148 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
149 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
150 are displayed.
151
152 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
153 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
154
155 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
156 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
157 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
158
159 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
160 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
161 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
162 main subprogram.
163
164 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
165 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
166
167 * New system-wide configuration scripts
168 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
169 configuration scripts for the following systems:
170 ** ElinOS
171 ** Wind River Linux
172
173 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
174 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
175 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
176 below.
177
178 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
179 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
180
181 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
182 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
183 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
184
185 * New remote packets
186
187 vCont;r
188
189 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
190 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
191 involvemement at each single-step.
192
193 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
194 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
195 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
196 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
197 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
198 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
199 speedup.
200
201 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
202
203 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
204 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
205
206 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
207 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
208 trace state variables.
209
210 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
211 target.
212
213 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
214 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
215
216 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
217
218 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
219 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
220 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
221 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
222
223 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
224
225 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
226 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
227 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
228 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
229
230 set|show record full insn-number-max
231 set|show record full stop-at-limit
232 set|show record full memory-query
233
234 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
235 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
236 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
237 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
238 This new recording method can be enabled using:
239
240 record btrace
241
242 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
243 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
244
245 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
246 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
247 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
248
249 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
250 instruction granularity
251
252 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
253 function granularity
254
255 * New native configurations
256
257 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
258 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
259 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
260 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
261
262 * New targets
263
264 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
265 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
266 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
267 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
268 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
269
270 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
271 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
272 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
273 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
274 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
275 --data-directory command-line option.
276
277 * New command line options:
278
279 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
280 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
281
282 * Removed command line options
283
284 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
285 Emacs.
286
287 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
288 type formatting.
289
290 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
291
292 * Python scripting
293
294 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
295
296 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
297
298 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
299
300 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
301
302 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
303 of architecture in the Python API.
304
305 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
306 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
307
308 * New Python-based convenience functions:
309
310 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
311 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
312 ** $_strlen(str)
313 ** $_regex(str, regex)
314
315 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
316 given an argument.
317
318 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
319 default for GCC since November 2000.
320
321 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
322
323 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
324 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
325
326 * New configure options
327
328 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
329 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
330 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
331 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
332 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
333 options allow the user to override that default.
334 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
335 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
336 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
337
338 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
339
340 catch signal
341 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
342 conditions to be attached.
343
344 maint info bfds
345 List the BFDs known to GDB.
346
347 python-interactive [command]
348 pi [command]
349 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
350 and print the result of expressions.
351
352 py [command]
353 "py" is a new alias for "python".
354
355 enable type-printer [name]...
356 disable type-printer [name]...
357 Enable or disable type printers.
358
359 * Removed commands
360
361 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
362 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
363 instead.
364
365 * New options
366
367 set print type methods (on|off)
368 show print type methods
369 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
370 The default is to show them.
371
372 set print type typedefs (on|off)
373 show print type typedefs
374 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
375 The default is to show them.
376
377 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
378 show filename-display
379 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
380 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
381
382 set trace-buffer-size
383 show trace-buffer-size
384 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
385
386 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
387 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
388 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
389
390 set debug aarch64
391 show debug aarch64
392 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
393 The default is off.
394
395 set debug coff-pe-read
396 show debug coff-pe-read
397 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
398 exported symbols.
399
400 set debug mach-o
401 show debug mach-o
402 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
403 processing.
404
405 set debug notification
406 show debug notification
407 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
408
409 * MI changes
410
411 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
412 "=cmd-param-changed".
413 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
414 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
415 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
416 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
417 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
418 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
419 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
420 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
421 "=memory-changed".
422 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
423 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
424 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
425 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
426 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
427 library load/unload events.
428 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
429 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
430 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
431 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
432 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
433 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
434 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
435 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
436
437 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
438 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
439 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
440 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
441
442 * New remote packets
443
444 QTBuffer:size
445 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
446 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
447
448 Qbtrace:bts
449 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
450 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
451 qSupported query.
452
453 Qbtrace:off
454 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
455 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
456
457 qXfer:btrace:read
458 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
459 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
460
461 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
462
463 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
464 for more x32 ABI info.
465
466 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
467
468 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
469
470 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
471 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
472 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
473 "info os files" lists file descriptors
474 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
475 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
476 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
477 "info os msg" lists message queues
478 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
479
480 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
481 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
482 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
483 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
484 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
485 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
486
487 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
488 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
489 record/replay support.
490
491 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
492
493 * Python scripting
494
495 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
496 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
497
498 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
499
500 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
501 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
502
503 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
504
505 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
506 the source at which the symbol was defined.
507
508 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
509 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
510 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
511 symbol's value.
512
513 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
514 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
515
516 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
517 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
518 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
519
520 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
521 object associated with a PC value.
522
523 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
524 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
525
526 * Go language support.
527 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
528 language.
529
530 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
531 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
532
533 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
534 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
535
536 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
537 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
538 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
539 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
540 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
541 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
542
543 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
544 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
545 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
546 build/libcpp/expr.c.
547
548 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
549 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
550
551 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
552 since December 2007.
553
554 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
555 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
556 command does. For instance:
557
558 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
559
560 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
561 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
562 created, using the "condition" command.
563
564 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
565 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
566
567 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
568
569 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
570 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
571 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
572 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
573 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
574 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
575 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
576 files with older .gdb_index sections.
577
578 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
579 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
580 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
581 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
582 the .gdb_index section.
583
584 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
585
586 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
587 target.
588
589 * MI changes
590
591 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
592
593 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
594
595 * New commands
596
597 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
598 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
599 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
600
601 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
602 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
603
604 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
605 several hits.
606
607 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
608 C++ and Java objects.
609
610 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
611 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
612 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
613 configured with '--with-python'.
614
615 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
616 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
617 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
618 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
619 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
620 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
621 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
622
623 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
624 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
625 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
626 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
627
628 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
629 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
630 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
631 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
632
633 ** "set print symbol"
634 "show print symbol"
635 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
636 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
637 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
638
639 * Deprecated commands
640
641 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
642 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
643
644 * New targets
645
646 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
647 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
648
649 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
650 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
651 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
652 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
653 evaluates to true.
654
655 * New options
656
657 set mips compression
658 show mips compression
659 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
660 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
661 mips16
662 micromips
663 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
664
665 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
666 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
667 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
668 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
669 available mode.
670 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
671 target.
672
673 set auto-load off
674 Disable auto-loading globally.
675
676 show auto-load
677 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
678
679 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
680 show auto-load gdb-scripts
681 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
682
683 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
684 show auto-load python-scripts
685 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
686
687 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
688 show auto-load local-gdbinit
689 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
690
691 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
692 show auto-load libthread-db
693 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
694
695 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
696 show auto-load scripts-directory
697 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
698 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
699 of the directories listed by this option.
700 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
701
702 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
703 show auto-load safe-path
704 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
705 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
706
707 set debug auto-load on|off
708 show debug auto-load
709 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
710
711 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
712 show dprintf-style
713 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
714 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
715 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
716 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
717
718 set dprintf-function <expr>
719 show dprintf-function
720 set dprintf-channel <expr>
721 show dprintf-channel
722 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
723 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
724
725 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
726 show disconnected-dprintf
727 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
728 after GDB disconnects.
729
730 * New configure options
731
732 --with-auto-load-dir
733 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
734 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
735 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
736 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
737 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
738
739 --with-auto-load-safe-path
740 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
741 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
742
743 --without-auto-load-safe-path
744 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
745 security feature.
746
747 * New remote packets
748
749 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
750
751 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
752 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
753 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
754 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
755
756 QProgramSignals:
757
758 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
759 program without GDB involvement.
760
761 * New command line options
762
763 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
764 before loading inferior.
765 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
766 execute it before loading inferior.
767
768 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
769
770 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
771 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
772 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
773 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
774 inferior changes.
775
776 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
777 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
778
779 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
780 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
781 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
782 target hardware watchpoint.
783
784 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
785 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
786 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
787 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
788
789 * Python scripting
790
791 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
792 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
793 existing one.
794
795 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
796 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
797 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
798 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
799 now "message", which just prints the error message without
800 the stack trace.
801
802 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
803 Python API.
804
805 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
806 modules library. This module provides functionality for
807 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
808 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
809 corresponding value.
810
811 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
812 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
813 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
814 on GDB start-up.
815
816 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
817 static_block will return the global and static blocks
818 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
819 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
820
821 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
822
823 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
824 "gdb.breakpoints".
825
826 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
827 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
828 available in the CLI.
829
830 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
831 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
832 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
833 "some_type.items()".
834
835 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
836 new object file.
837
838 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
839 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
840 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
841 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
842 any anonymous fields.
843
844 * MI changes
845
846 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
847 "solib-event".
848
849 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
850 "=breakpoint-modified".
851
852 ** New command -ada-task-info.
853
854 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
855 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
856 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
857 lives.
858
859 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
860 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
861 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
862 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
863 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
864
865 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
866 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
867
868 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
869 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
870 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
871 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
872 use this option to specify where to find it.
873
874 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
875 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
876 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
877 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
878 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
879 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
880 section in the user manual for more details.
881
882 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
883 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
884 become available after that.
885
886 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
887
888 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
889 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
890 gcc version 4.7.
891
892 * New commands
893
894 !SHELL COMMAND
895 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
896 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
897
898 * Changed commands
899
900 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
901 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
902 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
903
904 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
905 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
906 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
907
908 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
909 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
910 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
911 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
912 name starts with a hyphen.
913
914 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
915 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
916 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
917 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
918 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
919 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
920 number of bytes that will be collected.
921
922 tstart [NOTES]
923 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
924 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
925 setting the variable trace-notes.
926
927 tstop [NOTES]
928 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
929 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
930 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
931 trace-stop-notes.
932
933 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
934 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
935 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
936 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
937 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
938 is running.
939
940 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
941 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
942 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
943
944 * New options
945
946 set debug dwarf2-read
947 show debug dwarf2-read
948 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
949 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
950
951 set debug symtab-create
952 show debug symtab-create
953 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
954 creation. The default is off.
955
956 set extended-prompt
957 show extended-prompt
958 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
959 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
960 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
961 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
962 prompt is displayed.
963
964 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
965 show print entry-values
966 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
967 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
968 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
969
970 set debug entry-values
971 show debug entry-values
972 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
973 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
974
975 set basenames-may-differ
976 show basenames-may-differ
977 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
978 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
979 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
980 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
981 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
982 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
983 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
984 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
985
986 set trace-user
987 show trace-user
988 set trace-notes
989 show trace-notes
990 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
991 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
992 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
993 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
994
995 set trace-stop-notes
996 show trace-stop-notes
997 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
998 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
999 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1000 started by someone else.
1001
1002 * New remote packets
1003
1004 QTEnable
1005
1006 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1007
1008 QTDisable
1009
1010 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1011
1012 QTNotes
1013
1014 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1015
1016 qTP
1017
1018 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1019
1020 qTMinFTPILen
1021
1022 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1023 be placed.
1024
1025 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1026 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1027
1028 * New targets
1029
1030 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1031
1032 * New Simulators
1033
1034 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1035
1036 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1037
1038 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1039
1040 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1041
1042 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1043 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1044 matches the given regular expression.
1045
1046 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1047
1048 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1049 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1050
1051 * New command line options
1052
1053 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1054 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1055
1056 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1057 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1058
1059 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1060 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1061 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1062
1063 * GDB now understands thread names.
1064
1065 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1066 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1067
1068 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1069 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1070
1071 * OpenCL C
1072 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1073 has been integrated into GDB.
1074
1075 * Python scripting
1076
1077 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1078 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1079 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1080
1081 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1082 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1083 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1084 and allows for more dynamic content.
1085
1086 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1087 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1088 have an is_valid method.
1089
1090 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1091 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1092 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1093
1094 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1095
1096 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1097 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1098 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1099 that function like so:
1100
1101 result = some_value (10,20)
1102
1103 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1104 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1105 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1106
1107 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1108 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1109 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1110 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1111 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1112
1113 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1114 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1115
1116 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1117
1118 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1119 selected thread.
1120
1121 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1122 holds the thread's name.
1123
1124 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1125 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1126 occurring in the process being debugged.
1127 The following events are currently supported:
1128 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1129 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1130 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1131
1132 * C++ Improvements:
1133
1134 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1135 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1136
1137 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1138
1139 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1140 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1141 was added to GCC 4.5.
1142
1143 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1144 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1145 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1146 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1147 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1148 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1149
1150 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1151 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1152 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1153 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1154 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1155
1156 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1157 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1158 execution to a label.
1159
1160 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1161 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1162 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1163 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1164
1165 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1166 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1167 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1168 of scope.
1169
1170 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1171
1172 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1173 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1174 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1175 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1176 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1177 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1178
1179 (gdb) info threads
1180 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1181
1182 While now you see this:
1183
1184 (gdb) info threads
1185 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1186
1187 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1188 dumps.
1189
1190 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1191 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1192 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1193 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1194
1195 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1196 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1197 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1198 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1199 section in the user manual for more details.
1200
1201 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1202
1203 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1204 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1205
1206 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1207
1208 * New native configurations
1209
1210 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1211
1212 * New targets:
1213
1214 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1215
1216 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1217 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1218 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1219 in the GDB user manual.
1220
1221 * Guile support was removed.
1222
1223 * New features in the GNU simulator
1224
1225 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1226
1227 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1228
1229 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1230
1231 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1232
1233 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1234 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1235 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1236 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1237 was always disabled for such configurations.
1238
1239 * C++ Improvements:
1240
1241 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1242
1243 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1244 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1245 For example:
1246 namespace A
1247 {
1248 class B { };
1249 void foo (B) { }
1250 }
1251 ...
1252 A::B b
1253 foo(b)
1254 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1255 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1256 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1257
1258 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1259
1260 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1261 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1262 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1263 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1264 entry.
1265 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1266 mentioned flavors of operators.
1267
1268 ** static const class members
1269
1270 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1271 class definition has been fixed.
1272
1273 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1274
1275 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1276 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1277 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1278 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1279 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1280 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1281
1282 * Static tracepoints
1283
1284 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1285 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1286 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1287 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1288 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1289 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1290 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1291 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1292 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1293 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1294 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1295 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1296 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1297 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1298 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1299 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1300 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1301 the "New remote packets" section below.
1302
1303 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1304
1305 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1306 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1307 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1308 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1309
1310 * Observer mode
1311
1312 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1313 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1314 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1315 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1316 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1317 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1318 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1319
1320 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1321 current thread.
1322
1323 * New remote packets
1324
1325 qGetTIBAddr
1326
1327 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1328
1329 qRelocInsn
1330
1331 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1332 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1333 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1334 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1335 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1336 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1337
1338 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1339
1340 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1341
1342 qTSTMat
1343
1344 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1345 program.
1346
1347 qXfer:statictrace:read
1348
1349 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1350 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1351 to gdb's qSupported query.
1352
1353 QAllow
1354
1355 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1356
1357 QTDPsrc
1358
1359 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1360 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1361
1362 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1363 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1364 a directory.
1365
1366 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1367
1368 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1369 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1370 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1371 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1372
1373 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1374 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1375 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1376 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1377 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1378 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1379 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1380
1381 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1382 for static tracepoints support.
1383
1384 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1385
1386 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1387 it understands register description.
1388
1389 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1390
1391 * X86 general purpose registers
1392
1393 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1394 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1395 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1396 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1397 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1398
1399 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1400 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1401 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1402 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1403 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1404 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1405
1406 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1407 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1408 in the specified file.
1409
1410 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1411 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1412 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1413 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1414 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1415 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1416 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1417 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1418 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1419 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1420
1421 * New commands
1422
1423 eval template, expressions...
1424 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1425 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1426
1427 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1428 show target-file-system-kind
1429 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1430 names.
1431
1432 save breakpoints <filename>
1433 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1434 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1435 definitions, use the `source' command.
1436
1437 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1438 is now deprecated.
1439
1440 info static-tracepoint-markers
1441 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1442
1443 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1444 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1445 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1446
1447 set observer on|off
1448 show observer
1449 Enable and disable observer mode.
1450
1451 set may-write-registers on|off
1452 set may-write-memory on|off
1453 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1454 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1455 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1456 set may-interrupt on|off
1457 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1458 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1459 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1460 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1461 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1462 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1463 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1464
1465 set record memory-query on|off
1466 show record memory-query
1467 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1468 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1469
1470 * Changed commands
1471
1472 disassemble
1473 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1474
1475 * Python scripting
1476
1477 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1478 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1479 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1480 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1481 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1482
1483 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1484 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1485 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1486 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1487
1488 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1489 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1490
1491 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1492
1493 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1494
1495 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1496
1497 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1498 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1499 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1500
1501 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1502 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1503 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1504 regular breakpoints.
1505
1506 * New targets
1507
1508 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1509
1510 * D language support.
1511 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1512 language.
1513
1514 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1515 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1516 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1517 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1518 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1519
1520 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1521 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1522 conditions of the form:
1523
1524 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1525
1526 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1527 interface mentioned above.
1528
1529 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1530
1531 * C++ Improvements
1532
1533 ** Namespace Support
1534
1535 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1536 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1537 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1538 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1539 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1540
1541 ** Bug Fixes
1542
1543 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1544 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1545 qualified name.
1546
1547 ** Cast Operators
1548
1549 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1550 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1551
1552 * New targets
1553
1554 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1555 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
1556
1557 * New Simulators
1558
1559 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1560 Renesas RX rx
1561
1562 * Multi-program debugging.
1563
1564 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1565 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1566 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1567 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1568 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1569 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1570 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1571 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1572
1573 * New tracing features
1574
1575 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1576
1577 ** Trace state variables
1578
1579 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1580 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1581 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1582 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1583 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1584 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1585 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1586 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1587 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1588 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1589
1590 ** Fast tracepoints
1591
1592 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1593 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1594 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1595 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1596 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1597 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1598 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1599 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1600 the regular trace command.
1601
1602 ** Disconnected tracing
1603
1604 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1605 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1606 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1607 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1608 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1609
1610 ** Trace files
1611
1612 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1613 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1614 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1615 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1616 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1617 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1618 <name>".
1619
1620 ** Circular trace buffer
1621
1622 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1623 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1624 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1625 not be available for all target agents.
1626
1627 * Changed commands
1628
1629 disassemble
1630 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1631 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1632
1633 info variables
1634 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1635 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1636
1637 source
1638 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1639 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1640 support.
1641
1642 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1643 "set script-extension" (see below).
1644
1645 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1646
1647 record save [<FILENAME>]
1648 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1649 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1650
1651 record restore <FILENAME>
1652 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1653 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1654
1655 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1656 Add a new inferior.
1657
1658 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1659 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1660 inferior has loaded.
1661
1662 remove-inferior ID
1663 Remove an inferior.
1664
1665 maint info program-spaces
1666 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1667
1668 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1669 show remote interrupt-sequence
1670 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1671 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1672 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1673 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1674 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1675
1676 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1677 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1678 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1679 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1680 Linux kernel.
1681
1682 set remotebreak [on | off]
1683 show remotebreak
1684 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1685
1686 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1687 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1688
1689 info tvariables
1690 List trace state variables and their values.
1691
1692 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1693 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1694
1695 teval EXPR, ...
1696 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1697 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1698
1699 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1700 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1701
1702 * New expression syntax
1703
1704 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1705 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1706
1707 * New options
1708
1709 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1710 show follow-exec-mode
1711 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1712 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1713 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1714
1715 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1716 show default-collect
1717 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1718 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1719 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1720
1721 set disconnected-tracing
1722 show disconnected-tracing
1723 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1724 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1725 upon disconnection.
1726
1727 set circular-trace-buffer
1728 show circular-trace-buffer
1729 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1730 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1731 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1732 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1733
1734 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1735 show script-extension
1736 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1737 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1738 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1739 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1740 evaluation failed.
1741 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1742
1743 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1744 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1745 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1746 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1747 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1748 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1749 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1750 is on.
1751
1752 * Python API Improvements
1753
1754 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1755 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1756 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1757
1758 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1759 `is_base_class' attribute.
1760
1761 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1762
1763 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1764 evaluate an expression.
1765
1766 * New remote packets
1767
1768 QTDV
1769 Define a trace state variable.
1770
1771 qTV
1772 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1773
1774 QTDisconnected
1775 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1776
1777 QTBuffer:circular
1778 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1779
1780 qTfP, qTsP
1781 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1782
1783 * Bug fixes
1784
1785 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1786
1787 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1788 much more reliable. In particular:
1789 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1790 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1791 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1792 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1793 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1794 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1795 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1796 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1797 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1798 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1799 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1800 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1801 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1802 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1803 non-threaded programs.
1804
1805 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1806 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1807 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1808 executable program.
1809
1810 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1811
1812 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1813 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1814 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1815 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1816 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1817
1818 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1819 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1820 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1821 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1822 for tracepoint actions.
1823
1824 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1825 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1826 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1827
1828 * Process record and replay
1829
1830 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1831 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1832 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1833 execute commands.
1834
1835 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1836 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1837 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1838 reverse execution.
1839
1840 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1841 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1842 2.6.28 or later.
1843
1844 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1845 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1846 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1847 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1848 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1849 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1850 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1851 the installation instructions for more information.
1852
1853 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1854 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1855 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1856 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1857
1858 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1859 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1860
1861 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1862 now complete on file names.
1863
1864 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1865 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1866 For instance, consider:
1867
1868 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1869 # struct example variable;
1870 (gdb) p variable.
1871
1872 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1873 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1874
1875 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1876 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1877
1878 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1879 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1880 macros.
1881
1882 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1883 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1884 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1885
1886 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1887 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1888 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1889 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1890
1891 * New remote packets
1892
1893 qSearch:memory:
1894 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1895
1896 QStartNoAckMode
1897 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1898 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1899 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1900
1901 vKill
1902 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1903 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1904
1905 qXfer:osdata:read
1906 Obtains additional operating system information
1907
1908 qXfer:siginfo:read
1909 qXfer:siginfo:write
1910 Read or write additional signal information.
1911
1912 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1913
1914 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1915 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1916 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1917
1918 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1919 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1920
1921 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1922 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1923 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1924
1925 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1926 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1927
1928 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1929
1930 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1931
1932 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1933 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1934
1935 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1936 list of section offsets.
1937
1938 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1939 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1940 have also been fixed.
1941
1942 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1943 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1944 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1945
1946 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1947 example, given:
1948
1949 template<typename T> class C { };
1950 C<char const *> c;
1951
1952 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1953
1954 ptype C<char const *>
1955 ptype C<char const*>
1956 ptype C<const char *>
1957 ptype C<const char*>
1958
1959 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1960
1961 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1962 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1963
1964 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1965 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1966 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1967
1968 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1969 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1970
1971 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1972 gdbserver.
1973
1974 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1975 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1976
1977 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1978 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1979 as appropriate.
1980
1981 * Python scripting
1982
1983 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1984 available is determined at configure time.
1985
1986 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1987
1988 * Ada tasking support
1989
1990 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1991 been introduced:
1992
1993 info tasks
1994 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1995 info task N
1996 Print detailed information about task number N.
1997 task
1998 Print the task number of the current task.
1999 task N
2000 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2001
2002 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2003 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2004
2005 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2006
2007 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2008 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2009 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2010 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2011 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2012 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2013 below.
2014
2015 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2016 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2017 information.
2018
2019 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2020 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2021 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2022 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2023 more information.
2024
2025 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2026
2027 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2028 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2029 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2030 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2031 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2032
2033 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2034 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2035 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2036 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2037 --enable-targets configure option.
2038
2039 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2040
2041 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2042 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2043 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2044 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2045 section in the user manual for more information.
2046
2047 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2048 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2049 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2050 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2051 extensions on linux targets.
2052
2053 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2054
2055 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2056 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2057 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2058 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2059 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2060 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2061 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2062 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2063 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2064
2065 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2066 val1 [, val2, ...]
2067 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2068
2069 maint set python print-stack
2070 maint show python print-stack
2071 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2072
2073 python [CODE]
2074 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2075
2076 macro define
2077 macro list
2078 macro undef
2079 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2080 interactively.
2081
2082 info os processes
2083 Show operating system information about processes.
2084
2085 info inferiors
2086 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2087
2088 inferior NUM
2089 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2090
2091 detach inferior NUM
2092 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2093
2094 kill inferior NUM
2095 Kill inferior number NUM.
2096
2097 * New options
2098
2099 set spu stop-on-load
2100 show spu stop-on-load
2101 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2102
2103 set spu auto-flush-cache
2104 show spu auto-flush-cache
2105 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2106 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2107
2108 set sh calling-convention
2109 show sh calling-convention
2110 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2111
2112 set debug timestamp
2113 show debug timestamp
2114 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2115
2116 set disassemble-next-line
2117 show disassemble-next-line
2118 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2119 the debuggee stops.
2120
2121 set remote noack-packet
2122 show remote noack-packet
2123 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2124 under "New remote packets."
2125
2126 set remote query-attached-packet
2127 show remote query-attached-packet
2128 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2129
2130 set remote read-siginfo-object
2131 show remote read-siginfo-object
2132 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2133 packet.
2134
2135 set remote write-siginfo-object
2136 show remote write-siginfo-object
2137 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2138 packet.
2139
2140 set remote reverse-continue
2141 show remote reverse-continue
2142 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2143
2144 set remote reverse-step
2145 show remote reverse-step
2146 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2147
2148 set displaced-stepping
2149 show displaced-stepping
2150 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2151 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2152 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2153
2154 set debug displaced
2155 show debug displaced
2156 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2157
2158 maint set internal-error
2159 maint show internal-error
2160 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2161
2162 maint set internal-warning
2163 maint show internal-warning
2164 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2165
2166 set exec-wrapper
2167 show exec-wrapper
2168 unset exec-wrapper
2169 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2170
2171 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2172 show multiple-symbols
2173 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2174 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2175 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2176
2177 set breakpoint always-inserted
2178 show breakpoint always-inserted
2179 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2180 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2181 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2182
2183 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2184 show arm fallback-mode
2185 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2186 show arm force-mode
2187 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2188 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2189 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2190 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2191
2192 set disable-randomization
2193 show disable-randomization
2194 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2195 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2196 multiple debugging sessions.
2197
2198 set non-stop
2199 show non-stop
2200 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2201 a breakpoint.
2202
2203 set target-async
2204 show target-async
2205 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2206 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2207 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2208 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2209
2210 set target-wide-charset
2211 show target-wide-charset
2212 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2213 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2214
2215 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2216 show tcp auto-retry
2217 set tcp connect-timeout
2218 show tcp connect-timeout
2219 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2220 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2221 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2222
2223 set libthread-db-search-path
2224 show libthread-db-search-path
2225 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2226 libthread_db.
2227
2228 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2229 show schedule-multiple
2230 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2231 the current process.
2232
2233 set stack-cache
2234 show stack-cache
2235 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2236 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2237 affecting correctness.
2238
2239 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2240 show interactive-mode
2241 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2242 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2243 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2244 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2245 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2246
2247 * Removed commands
2248
2249 info forks
2250 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2251 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2252 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2253 command.
2254
2255 fork NUM
2256 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2257 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2258 alias for the `fork' command.
2259
2260 process PID
2261 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2262 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2263 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2264
2265 delete fork NUM
2266 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2267 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2268 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2269 fork' command.
2270
2271 detach fork NUM
2272 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2273 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2274 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2275 fork' command.
2276
2277 * New native configurations
2278
2279 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2280
2281 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2282
2283 * New targets
2284
2285 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2286 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2287 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2288 S+core 3 score-*-*
2289
2290 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2291 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2292
2293 * Removed commands
2294
2295 catch load
2296 catch unload
2297 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2298
2299 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2300
2301 * New native configurations
2302
2303 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2304 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2305
2306 * New targets
2307
2308 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2309 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2310
2311 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2312
2313 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2314 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2315 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2316 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2317
2318 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2319 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2320
2321 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2322 is resolved.
2323
2324 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2325 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2326 and in inlined functions.
2327
2328 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2329 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2330 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2331
2332 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2333
2334 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2335 registers on PowerPC targets.
2336
2337 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2338 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2339
2340 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2341 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2342
2343 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2344 extended-remote mode.
2345
2346 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2347 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2348 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2349 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2350
2351 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2352 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2353 target architectures.
2354
2355 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2356 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2357 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2358 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2359
2360 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2361 breakpoints now.
2362
2363 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2364 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2365 include:
2366 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2367 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2368 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2369 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2370 of an assignment
2371 - Improved command completion in Ada
2372 - Several bug fixes
2373
2374 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2375 process.
2376
2377 * New commands
2378
2379 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2380 show print frame-arguments
2381 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2382 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2383
2384 remote put
2385 remote get
2386 remote delete
2387 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2388
2389 * New MI commands
2390
2391 -target-file-put
2392 -target-file-get
2393 -target-file-delete
2394 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2395
2396 * New remote packets
2397
2398 vFile:open:
2399 vFile:close:
2400 vFile:pread:
2401 vFile:pwrite:
2402 vFile:unlink:
2403 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2404
2405 vAttach
2406 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2407 mode.
2408
2409 vRun
2410 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2411
2412 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2413
2414 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2415 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2416 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2417
2418 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2419 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2420 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2421
2422 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2423 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2424 is not supported.
2425
2426 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2427 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2428
2429 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2430 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2431
2432 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2433
2434 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2435 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2436 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2437
2438 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2439 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2440
2441 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2442 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2443 as strings.
2444
2445 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2446 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2447 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2448
2449 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2450 iWMMXt coprocessor.
2451
2452 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2453 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2454 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2455
2456 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2457
2458 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2459
2460 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2461 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2462 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2463
2464 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2465 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2466
2467 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2468 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2469 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2470 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2471 Windows and SymbianOS).
2472
2473 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2474 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2475
2476 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2477 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2478
2479 * New commands
2480
2481 set remoteflow
2482 show remoteflow
2483 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2484 when debugging using remote targets.
2485
2486 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2487 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2488 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2489 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2490 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2491 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2492 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2493
2494 set breakpoint auto-hw
2495 show breakpoint auto-hw
2496 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2497 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2498 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2499 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2500 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2501 including "next" and "finish".
2502
2503 catch exception
2504 catch exception unhandled
2505 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2506
2507 catch assert
2508 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2509
2510 set sysroot
2511 show sysroot
2512 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2513 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2514 an alias to "set sysroot".
2515
2516 info spu
2517 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2518 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2519 architecture.
2520
2521 * New native configurations
2522
2523 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2524
2525 set tdesc filename
2526 unset tdesc filename
2527 show tdesc filename
2528 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2529 not query the target for its built-in description.
2530
2531 * New targets
2532
2533 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2534 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2535 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2536
2537 * New remote packets
2538
2539 QPassSignals:
2540 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2541 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2542
2543 qXfer:features:read:
2544 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2545 features.
2546
2547 qXfer:spu:read:
2548 qXfer:spu:write:
2549 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2550 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2551
2552 qXfer:libraries:read:
2553 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2554 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2555 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2556 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2557
2558 * Removed targets
2559
2560 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2561
2562 alpha*-*-osf1*
2563 alpha*-*-osf2*
2564 d10v-*-*
2565 hppa*-*-hiux*
2566 i[34567]86-ncr-*
2567 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2568 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2569 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2570 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2571 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2572 i[34567]86-*-sco*
2573 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2574 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2575 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2576 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2577 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2578 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2579 i[34567]86-*-isc*
2580 m68*-cisco*-*
2581 m68*-tandem-*
2582 mips*-*-pe
2583 rs6000-*-lynxos*
2584 sh*-*-pe
2585
2586 * Other removed features
2587
2588 target abug
2589 target cpu32bug
2590 target est
2591 target rom68k
2592
2593 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2594
2595 target hms
2596 target e7000
2597 target sh3
2598 target sh3e
2599
2600 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2601 H8/300.
2602
2603 target ocd
2604
2605 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2606 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2607 interfaces.
2608
2609 DWARF 1 support
2610
2611 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2612 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2613
2614 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2615
2616 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2617 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2618 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2619 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2620
2621 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2622
2623 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2624 in debugging information.
2625
2626 Scheme support
2627
2628 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2629 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2630
2631 set mips stack-arg-size
2632 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2633
2634 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2635
2636 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2637
2638 * New targets
2639
2640 Xtensa xtensa-elf
2641 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2642
2643 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2644 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2645 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2646
2647 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2648 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2649 supported.
2650
2651 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2652 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2653
2654 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2655 stub provides the required support.
2656
2657 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2658 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2659
2660 * New commands
2661
2662 set substitute-path
2663 unset substitute-path
2664 show substitute-path
2665 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2666 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2667 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2668 between compilation and debugging.
2669
2670 set trace-commands
2671 show trace-commands
2672 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2673 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2674 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2675
2676 * REMOVED features
2677
2678 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2679
2680 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2681 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2682
2683 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2684
2685 * New remote packets
2686
2687 qSupported:
2688 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2689 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2690 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2691 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2692 target.
2693
2694 qXfer:auxv:read:
2695 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2696 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2697
2698 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2699 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2700 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2701
2702 vFlashErase:
2703 vFlashWrite:
2704 vFlashDone:
2705 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2706
2707 * Removed remote packets
2708
2709 qPart:auxv:read:
2710 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2711 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2712
2713 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2714
2715 * New targets
2716
2717 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2718
2719 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2720
2721 * New commands
2722
2723 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2724 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2725
2726 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2727
2728 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2729
2730 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2731 previously saved state.
2732
2733 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2734
2735 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2736
2737 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2738 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2739
2740 info forks List forks of the user program that
2741 are available to be debugged.
2742
2743 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2744 forks of the user program that are
2745 available to be debugged.
2746
2747 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2748 that are available to be debugged (and
2749 kill the forked process).
2750
2751 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2752 that are available to be debugged (and
2753 allow the process to continue).
2754
2755 * New architecture
2756
2757 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2758
2759 * Improved Windows host support
2760
2761 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2762 native console support, and remote communications using either
2763 network sockets or serial ports.
2764
2765 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2766
2767 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2768 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2769 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2770 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2771 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2772 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2773
2774 * REMOVED features
2775
2776 The ARM rdi-share module.
2777
2778 The Netware NLM debug server.
2779
2780 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2781
2782 * New native configurations
2783
2784 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2785 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2786
2787 * New targets
2788
2789 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2790
2791 * New command line options
2792
2793 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2794 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2795 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2796 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2797 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2798 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2799 with the --command (-x) option.
2800
2801 * Deprecated commands removed
2802
2803 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2804 removed:
2805
2806 Command Replacement
2807 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2808 othernames set arm disassembler
2809 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2810 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2811 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2812 regs info registers
2813
2814 * New BSD user-level threads support
2815
2816 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2817 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2818 configurations are:
2819
2820 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2821 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2822 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2823
2824 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2825 are not yet supported.
2826
2827 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2828 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2829
2830 * REMOVED configurations and files
2831
2832 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2833 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2834 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2835
2836 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2837
2838 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2839 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2840 behavior.
2841
2842 * VAX floating point support
2843
2844 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2845
2846 * User-defined command support
2847
2848 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2849 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2850 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2851
2852 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2853
2854 * New command line option
2855
2856 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2857 debugging.
2858
2859 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2860
2861 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2862 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2863 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2864 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2865 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2866
2867 * Internationalization
2868
2869 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2870 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2871 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2872
2873 * Ada
2874
2875 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2876 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2877 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2878
2879 * New native configurations
2880
2881 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2882
2883 * Remote 'p' packet
2884
2885 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2886 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2887
2888 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2889
2890 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2891 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2892 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2893 i386 application).
2894
2895 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2896 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2897 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2898 configurations:
2899
2900 hppa-*-hpux
2901 ia64-*-aix
2902 mips-*-irix*
2903 *-*-lynx
2904 mips-*-linux-gnu
2905 sds protocol
2906 xdr protocol
2907 powerpc bdm protocol
2908
2909 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2910 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2911
2912 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2913
2914 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2915 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2916 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2917 permanently REMOVED.
2918
2919 h8300-*-*
2920 mcore-*-*
2921 mn10300-*-*
2922 ns32k-*-*
2923 sh64-*-*
2924 v850-*-*
2925
2926 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2927
2928 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2929
2930 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2931 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2932 been fixed.
2933
2934 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2935
2936 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2937 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2938 IRIX long double values).
2939
2940 * VAX and "next"
2941
2942 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2943 command. This problem has been fixed.
2944
2945 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2946
2947 * Fix for ``many threads''
2948
2949 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2950 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2951 error message:
2952
2953 ptrace: No such process.
2954 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2955
2956 This problem has been fixed.
2957
2958 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2959
2960 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2961 GDB to dump core).
2962
2963 * New ``start'' command.
2964
2965 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2966
2967 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2968
2969 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2970 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2971 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2972
2973 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2974 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2975 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2976 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2977 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2978 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2979 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2980 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2981 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2982
2983 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2984
2985 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2986 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2987 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2988 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2989 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2990
2991 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2992 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2993 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2994
2995 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2996
2997 * New native configurations
2998
2999 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3000 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3001 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3002 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3003 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3004 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3005 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3006
3007 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3008
3009 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3010 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3011 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3012 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3013 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3014 work, was also included.
3015
3016 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3017 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3018
3019 h8300-*-*
3020 mcore-*-*
3021 mn10300-*-*
3022 ns32k-*-*
3023 sh64-*-*
3024 v850-*-*
3025 xstormy16-*-*
3026
3027 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3028 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3029
3030 * REMOVED configurations and files
3031
3032 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3033 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3034 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3035 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3036 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3037 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3038 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3039 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3040 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3041 sonymips mips-sony-*
3042 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3043
3044 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3045
3046 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3047
3048 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3049 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3050 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3051 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3052 with GDB".
3053
3054 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3055
3056 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3057 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3058 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3059 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3060 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3061 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3062 are created.
3063
3064 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3065
3066 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3067
3068 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3069 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3070 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3071
3072 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3073
3074 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3075 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3076
3077 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3078
3079 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3080 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3081 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3082
3083 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3084
3085 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3086 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3087
3088 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3089
3090 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3091 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3092 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3093
3094 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3095
3096 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3097 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3098 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3099
3100 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3101
3102 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3103
3104 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3105 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3106
3107 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3108
3109 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3110 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3111 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3112 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3113
3114 * Revised SPARC target
3115
3116 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3117 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3118 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3119 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3120 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3121
3122 * New C++ demangler
3123
3124 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3125 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3126 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3127 programs.
3128
3129 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3130
3131 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3132 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3133 encountered these.
3134
3135 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3136
3137 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3138 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3139 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3140 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3141 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3142 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3143 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3144 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3145 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3146
3147 * New native configurations
3148
3149 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3150 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3151 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3152 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3153 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3154
3155 * New debugging protocols
3156
3157 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3158
3159 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3160
3161 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3162 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3163 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3164
3165 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3166
3167 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3168 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3169 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3170 permanently REMOVED.
3171
3172 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3173 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3174 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3175 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3176 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3177 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3178 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3179 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3180 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3181 sonymips mips-sony-*
3182 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3183
3184 * REMOVED configurations and files
3185
3186 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3187 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3188 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3189 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3190 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3191 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3192 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3193 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3194 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3195 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3196 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3197 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3198 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3199 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3200 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3201 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3202 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3203
3204 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3205
3206 * Objective-C
3207
3208 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3209 integrated into GDB.
3210
3211 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3212
3213 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3214 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3215 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3216 backtraces.
3217
3218 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3219 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3220 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3221
3222 * Hosted file I/O.
3223
3224 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3225 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3226 remote protocol documentation for details.
3227
3228 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3229
3230 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3231 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3232 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3233 ppc32 on ppc64).
3234
3235 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3236
3237 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3238 per-thread variables.
3239
3240 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3241
3242 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3243 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3244
3245 * Separate debug info.
3246
3247 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3248 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3249 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3250 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3251 and optional debug files.
3252
3253 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3254
3255 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3256 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3257 debugger.
3258
3259 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3260 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3261
3262 * Java
3263
3264 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3265 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3266 considered "useable".
3267
3268 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3269
3270 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3271 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3272 kernel.
3273
3274 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3275
3276 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3277 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3278
3279 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3280
3281 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3282 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3283 command.
3284
3285 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3286
3287 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3288 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3289
3290 * Profiling support
3291
3292 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3293 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3294 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3295 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3296 data, for more informative profiling results.
3297
3298 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3299
3300 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3301 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3302 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3303
3304 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3305 removed.
3306
3307 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3308 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3309 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3310 in a subsequent -var-update.
3311
3312 * New native configurations.
3313
3314 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3315
3316 * Multi-arched targets.
3317
3318 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3319 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3320
3321 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3322
3323 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3324 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3325 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3326 permanently REMOVED.
3327
3328 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3329 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3330 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3331 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3332 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3333 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3334 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3335 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3336 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3337 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3338 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3339 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3340
3341 * REMOVED configurations and files
3342
3343 V850EA ISA
3344 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3345 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3346 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3347 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3348 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3349 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3350 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3351 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3352 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3353 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3354 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3355 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3356 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3357
3358 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3359
3360 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3361 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3362 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3363 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3364 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3365
3366 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3367
3368 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3369
3370 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3371 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3372 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3373 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3374 shared libs like mad''.
3375
3376 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3377
3378 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3379 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3380 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3381 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3382
3383 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3384
3385 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3386 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3387 they expand.
3388
3389 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3390 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3391
3392 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3393 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3394
3395 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3396 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3397 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3398 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3399
3400 * Multi-arched targets.
3401
3402 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3403 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3404 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3405 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3406 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3407 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3408
3409 * New targets.
3410
3411 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3412
3413
3414 * New native configurations
3415
3416 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3417 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3418 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3419 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3420
3421 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3422
3423 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3424 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3425 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3426 permanently REMOVED.
3427
3428 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3429 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3430 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3431 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3432 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3433 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3434 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3435 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3436 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3437 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3438 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3439 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3440 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3441
3442 * OBSOLETE languages
3443
3444 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3445
3446 * REMOVED configurations and files
3447
3448 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3449 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3450 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3451 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3452 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3453
3454 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3455
3456 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3457
3458 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3459 commands. The default is 1024.
3460
3461 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3462
3463 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3464
3465 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3466
3467 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3468 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3469 from a file into memory (restore).
3470
3471 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3472
3473 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3474 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3475 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3476
3477 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3478
3479 * New targets.
3480
3481 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3482
3483 * Bug fixes
3484
3485 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3486 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3487 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3488
3489 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3490 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3491 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3492
3493 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3494 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3495 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3496
3497 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3498 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3499 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3500
3501 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3502
3503 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3504
3505 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3506 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3507 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3508 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3509 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3510 (notably embedded) targets.
3511
3512 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3513
3514 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3515 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3516 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3517 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3518
3519 * New command line option
3520
3521 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3522
3523 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3524
3525 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3526 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3527 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3528 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3529 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3530 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3531 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3532 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3533 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3534 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3535
3536 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3537
3538 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3539 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3540
3541 * New native configurations
3542
3543 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3544 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3545 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3546 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3547
3548 * New targets
3549
3550 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3551
3552 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3553
3554 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3555 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3556 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3557 permanently REMOVED.
3558
3559 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3560 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3561 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3562 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3563 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3564
3565 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3566
3567 * REMOVED configurations and files
3568
3569 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3570 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3571 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3572 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3573 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3574 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3575 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3576 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3577 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3578 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3579 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3580 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3581 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3582
3583 * Changes to command line processing
3584
3585 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3586 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3587
3588 * Changes to key bindings
3589
3590 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3591
3592 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3593
3594 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3595
3596 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3597 corrupted.
3598
3599 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3600
3601 Numerous documentation fixes.
3602
3603 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3604
3605 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3606
3607 * New native configurations
3608
3609 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3610 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3611 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3612 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3613 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3614 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3615
3616 * New targets
3617
3618 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3619 CRIS cris-axis
3620 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3621
3622 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3623
3624 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3625 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3626 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3627 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3628 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3629 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3630 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3631 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3632 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3633 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3634 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3635 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3636 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3637 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3638
3639 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3640 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3641
3642 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3643 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3644 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3645 permanently REMOVED.
3646
3647 * REMOVED configurations and files
3648
3649 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3650 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3651 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3652 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3653 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3654 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
3655
3656 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3657
3658 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3659 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3660 present.
3661
3662 * Other news:
3663
3664 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3665
3666 * The MI enabled by default.
3667
3668 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3669 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3670 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3671 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3672 which is now deprecated.
3673
3674 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3675
3676 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3677 main features are supported:
3678
3679 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3680
3681 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3682 extension;
3683
3684 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3685
3686 - a Pascal expression parser.
3687
3688 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3689
3690 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3691
3692 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3693
3694 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3695 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3696
3697 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3698
3699 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3700
3701 * Changes in completion.
3702
3703 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3704 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3705 users expect at the shell prompt.
3706
3707 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3708 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3709 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3710 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3711 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3712 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3713 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3714
3715 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3716
3717 * New platform-independent commands:
3718
3719 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3720 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3721 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3722
3723 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3724
3725 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3726 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3727 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3728
3729 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3730
3731 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3732 multi-threaded programs though.
3733
3734 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3735
3736 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3737
3738 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3739 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3740 supported.)
3741
3742 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3743
3744 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3745 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3746 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3747 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3748 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3749 registers.
3750
3751 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3752 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3753 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3754
3755 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3756
3757 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3758 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3759
3760 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3761 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3762 IDT.
3763
3764 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3765 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3766 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3767 a given linear address.
3768
3769 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3770 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3771 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3772
3773 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3774
3775 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3776
3777 * Changes in documentation.
3778
3779 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3780 Documentation License.
3781
3782 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3783 manual.
3784
3785 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3786
3787 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3788 manual.
3789
3790 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3791 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3792 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3793
3794 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3795
3796 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3797 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3798 contents of this file.
3799
3800 * gdba.el deleted
3801
3802 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3803
3804 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3805
3806 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3807
3808 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3809 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3810 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3811 greater level of detail.
3812
3813 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3814
3815 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3816 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3817 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3818 written.
3819
3820 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3821
3822 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3823 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3824 machines ``out of the box''.
3825
3826 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3827 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3828 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3829 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3830 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3831
3832 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3833 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3834 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3835 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3836 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3837
3838 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3839 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3840 also works.
3841
3842 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3843 GDB.
3844
3845 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3846 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3847 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3848 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3849
3850 * New native configurations
3851
3852 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3853 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3854
3855 * New targets
3856
3857 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3858 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3859 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3860 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3861
3862 * OBSOLETE configurations
3863
3864 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3865 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3866 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3867 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3868 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3869
3870 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3871 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3872 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3873 be permanently REMOVED.
3874
3875 * Gould support removed
3876
3877 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3878
3879 * New features for SVR4
3880
3881 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3882 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3883 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3884
3885 * Many C++ enhancements
3886
3887 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3888 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3889
3890 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3891
3892 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3893 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3894 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3895 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3896
3897 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3898 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3899
3900 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3901
3902 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3903 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3904 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3905
3906 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3907 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3908
3909 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3910
3911 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3912 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3913 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3914
3915 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3916
3917 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3918 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3919 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3920
3921 * ``apropos'' command added.
3922
3923 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3924 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3925 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3926
3927 * New MI interface
3928
3929 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3930 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3931 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3932 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3933 enabled by configuring with:
3934
3935 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3936
3937 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3938
3939 * New native configurations
3940
3941 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3942 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3943 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3944
3945 * New targets
3946
3947 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3948 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3949 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3950
3951 * OBSOLETE configurations
3952
3953 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3954
3955 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3956 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3957 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3958 be permanently REMOVED.
3959
3960 * ANSI/ISO C
3961
3962 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3963 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3964 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3965 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3966 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3967 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3968 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3969 already.
3970
3971 * Readline 2.2
3972
3973 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3974
3975 * set extension-language
3976
3977 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3978 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3979 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3980 set extension-language .c c++
3981 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3982 and their associated languages.
3983
3984 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3985
3986 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3987 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3988 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3989
3990 set processor NAME
3991
3992 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3993 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3994
3995 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3996 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3997 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3998 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3999 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4000 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4001 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4002 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4003 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4004 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4005 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4006
4007 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4008 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4009 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4010 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4011
4012 * HP-UX support
4013
4014 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4015 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4016 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4017 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4018 for xdb and dbx commands.
4019
4020 * Catchpoints
4021
4022 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4023 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4024 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4025
4026 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4027 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4028 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4029
4030 * Debugging across forks
4031
4032 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4033 in the inferior.
4034
4035 * TUI
4036
4037 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4038 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4039 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4040
4041 * GDB remote protocol additions
4042
4043 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4044 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4045 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4046 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4047
4048 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4049 full 64-bit address. The command
4050
4051 set remoteaddresssize 32
4052
4053 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4054 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4055 will be discarded.
4056
4057 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4058 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4059
4060 maint packet heythere
4061
4062 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4063 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4064 time.
4065
4066 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4067 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4068 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4069
4070 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4071
4072 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4073 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4074 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4075
4076 * mask-address variable for Mips
4077
4078 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4079 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4080 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4081
4082 * Higher serial baud rates
4083
4084 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4085 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4086 to achieve all of these rates.)
4087
4088 * i960 simulator
4089
4090 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4091 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4092
4093
4094 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4095
4096 * New native configurations
4097
4098 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4099 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4100 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4101 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4102 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4103 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4104 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4105
4106 * New targets
4107
4108 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4109 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4110 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4111 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4112 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4113 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4114 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4115 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4116 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4117 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4118 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4119
4120 * New debugging protocols
4121
4122 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4123 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4124 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4125 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4126 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4127 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4128
4129 * DWARF 2
4130
4131 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4132 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4133 information.
4134
4135 * Java frontend
4136
4137 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4138 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4139
4140 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4141
4142 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4143 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4144 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4145
4146 * Live range splitting
4147
4148 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4149 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4150 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4151
4152 * Hurd support
4153
4154 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4155 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4156
4157 * ARM Thumb support
4158
4159 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4160 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4161 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4162 accordingly.
4163
4164 * MIPS16 support
4165
4166 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4167 instruction set.
4168
4169 * Overlay support
4170
4171 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4172 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4173 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4174 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4175 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4176 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4177
4178 * info symbol
4179
4180 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4181 the symbol at the specified address.
4182
4183 * Trace support
4184
4185 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4186 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4187 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4188 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4189 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4190
4191 * MIPS simulator
4192
4193 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4194 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4195 of most MIPS variants.
4196
4197 * Sparc simulator
4198
4199 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4200 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4201 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4202
4203 * set architecture
4204
4205 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4206 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4207 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4208 the possible architectures.
4209
4210 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4211
4212 * New native configurations
4213
4214 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4215 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4216 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4217 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4218 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4219 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4220
4221 * New targets
4222
4223 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4224 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4225 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4226 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4227 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4228 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4229 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4230
4231 * PowerPC simulator
4232
4233 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4234 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4235 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4236 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4237 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4238
4239 * Solaris 2.5
4240
4241 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4242
4243 * Windows 95/NT native
4244
4245 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4246 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4247 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4248 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4249 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4250
4251 * dont-repeat command
4252
4253 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4254 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4255 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4256 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4257
4258 * Send break instead of ^C
4259
4260 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4261 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4262 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4263
4264 * Remote protocol timeout
4265
4266 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4267 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4268 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4269
4270 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4271
4272 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4273 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4274 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4275 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4276 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4277
4278 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4279 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4280 automatically on hpux10.
4281
4282 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4283
4284 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4285
4286 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4287
4288 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4289 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4290 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4291 every character. The default value is 1050.
4292
4293 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4294
4295 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4296 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4297 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4298 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4299 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4300 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4301
4302 * Speedups for remote debugging
4303
4304 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4305 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4306 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4307
4308 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4309
4310 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4311 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4312
4313 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4314
4315 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4316
4317 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4318 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4319
4320 * Remote targets use caching
4321
4322 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4323 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4324 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4325 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4326 off' turns the the data cache off.
4327
4328 * Remote targets may have threads
4329
4330 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4331 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4332 gdb/remote.c for details.
4333
4334 * NetROM support
4335
4336 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4337 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4338 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4339 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4340 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4341 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4342 sequence is something like
4343
4344 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4345 load <prog>
4346 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4347
4348 * Macintosh host
4349
4350 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4351 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4352 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4353 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4354 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4355 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4356 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4357 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4358
4359 * Autoconf
4360
4361 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4362 but does simplify configuration and building.
4363
4364 * hpux10
4365
4366 GDB now supports hpux10.
4367
4368 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4369
4370 * New native configurations
4371
4372 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4373 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4374 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4375 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4376
4377 * New targets
4378
4379 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4380 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4381 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4382 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4383 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4384
4385 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4386
4387 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4388 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4389 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4390 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4391 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4392
4393 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4394
4395 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4396 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4397 trivial example:
4398 define adder
4399 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4400
4401 To execute the command use:
4402 adder 1 2 3
4403
4404 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4405 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4406 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4407
4408 * New `if' and `while' commands
4409
4410 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4411 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4412 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4413 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4414 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4415 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4416 if the expression is zero.
4417
4418 * Fortran source language mode
4419
4420 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4421 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4422 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4423 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4424 Fortran compilers.
4425
4426 * Better HPUX support
4427
4428 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4429 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4430 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4431 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4432 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4433
4434 adb -w a.out
4435 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4436 control-d
4437
4438 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4439 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4440
4441 adb -w a.out
4442 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4443 control-d
4444
4445 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4446 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4447 external linkage.
4448
4449 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4450 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4451
4452 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4453
4454 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4455 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4456 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4457 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4458 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4459 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4460
4461 * New DOS host serial code
4462
4463 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4464 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4465 a PC's serial port.
4466
4467 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4468
4469 * New "complete" command
4470
4471 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4472 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4473
4474 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4475
4476 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4477 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4478
4479 * Breakpoint hit counts
4480
4481 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4482 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4483 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4484 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4485 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4486 that breakpoint.
4487
4488 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4489
4490 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4491 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4492 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4493
4494 * Shared library breakpoints
4495
4496 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4497 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4498
4499 * Hardware watchpoints
4500
4501 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4502 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4503
4504 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4505
4506 * Annotations
4507
4508 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4509 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4510
4511 * Improved Irix 5 support
4512
4513 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4514
4515 * Improved HPPA support
4516
4517 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4518
4519 * New native configurations
4520
4521 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4522 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4523 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4524 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4525
4526 * New targets
4527
4528 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4529 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4530 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4531
4532 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4533
4534 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4535 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4536
4537 * Fixes
4538
4539 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4540 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4541
4542 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4543
4544 * Irix 5 is now supported
4545
4546 * HPPA support
4547
4548 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4549 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4550 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4551 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4552 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4553
4554
4555 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4556
4557 * User visible changes:
4558
4559 * Remote Debugging
4560
4561 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4562 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4563 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4564 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4565 debugging info for the mips target).
4566
4567 * DEC Alpha native support
4568
4569 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4570 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4571 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4572 Alpha-specific notes.
4573
4574 * Preliminary thread implementation
4575
4576 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4577
4578 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4579
4580 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4581 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4582 for details).
4583
4584 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4585
4586 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4587 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4588 call methods, ...etc.
4589
4590 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4591
4592 * User visible changes:
4593
4594 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4595 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4596 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4597 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4598
4599 Filename completion now works.
4600
4601 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4602 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4603 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4604
4605 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4606 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4607 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4608 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4609 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4610
4611 * DEC alpha support
4612
4613 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4614 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4615
4616
4617 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4618
4619 * Testsuite
4620
4621 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4622 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4623 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4624
4625 * C++ demangling
4626
4627 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4628 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4629 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4630 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4631 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4632
4633 * Simulators
4634
4635 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4636 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4637 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4638
4639 * New targets supported
4640
4641 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4642 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4643 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4644 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4645 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4646
4647 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4648 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4649 GO32 memory extender.
4650
4651 * New remote protocols
4652
4653 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4654
4655 * New source languages supported
4656
4657 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4658 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4659 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4660
4661
4662 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4663
4664 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4665
4666 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4667 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4668 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4669 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4670 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4671 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4672
4673 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4674
4675 * Faster and better demangling
4676
4677 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4678 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4679 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4680 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4681 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4682 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4683 symbol lookups.
4684
4685 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4686 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4687 compiler does not actually implement.
4688
4689 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4690
4691 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4692 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4693 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4694 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4695 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4696 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4697 fix.
4698
4699 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4700 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4701
4702 * Improved configure script
4703
4704 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4705 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4706 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4707 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4708
4709 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4710 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4711 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4712 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4713 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4714 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4715
4716 * Documentation improvements
4717
4718 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4719 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4720 before submitting changes.
4721
4722 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4723 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4724 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4725 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4726 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4727
4728 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4729 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4730 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4731 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4732 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4733 around this problem.
4734
4735 * New features
4736
4737 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4738 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4739 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4740 the target program.
4741
4742 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4743 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4744
4745 * New native hosts supported
4746
4747 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4748 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4749
4750 * New targets supported
4751
4752 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4753
4754 * New file formats supported
4755
4756 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4757 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4758
4759 * Major bug fixes
4760
4761 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4762
4763 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4764 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4765
4766 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4767 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4768 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4769
4770 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4771 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4772
4773 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4774 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4775 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4776 libraries.
4777
4778 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4779 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4780 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4781 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4782 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4783
4784 * Internal improvements
4785
4786 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4787 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4788
4789 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4790 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4791 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4792 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4793 shared code that handles any of them.
4794
4795 * New command line options
4796
4797 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4798
4799 * Mmalloc licensing
4800
4801 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4802 General Public License.
4803
4804 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4805
4806 * Host/native/target split
4807
4808 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4809 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4810 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4811 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4812 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4813
4814 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4815 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4816 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4817 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4818 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4819 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4820 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4821
4822 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4823 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4824 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4825
4826 * New hosts supported
4827
4828 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4829 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4830 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4831
4832 * New targets supported
4833
4834 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4835 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4836
4837 * New native hosts supported
4838
4839 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4840 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4841 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4842
4843 * New file formats supported
4844
4845 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4846 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4847 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4848
4849 * New commands
4850
4851 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4852 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4853 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4854
4855 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4856
4857 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4858 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4859 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4860 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4861
4862 * C++ improvements
4863
4864 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4865 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4866 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4867
4868 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4869
4870 * Major bug fixes
4871
4872 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4873 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4874 by the compiler.
4875
4876 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4877 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4878
4879 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4880 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4881 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4882 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4883 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4884 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4885
4886 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4887 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4888 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4889 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4890
4891 * AMD 29k support
4892
4893 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4894 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4895 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4896 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4897 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4898
4899 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4900 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4901 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4902 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4903
4904 * Remote interfaces
4905
4906 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4907 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4908 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4909 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4910 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4911 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4912 each instruction being stepped through.
4913
4914 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4915 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4916
4917 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4918 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4919 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4920 processor with a serial port.
4921
4922 * Configuration
4923
4924 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4925 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4926 supported, and what files each one uses.
4927
4928 * Library changes
4929
4930 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4931 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4932 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4933 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4934
4935 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4936 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4937 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4938 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4939
4940 * Documentation
4941
4942 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4943 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4944 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4945 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4946 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4947 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4948
4949 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4950
4951
4952 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4953
4954 * Better support for C++ function names
4955
4956 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4957 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4958 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4959 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4960 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4961
4962 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4963 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4964 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4965 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4966 for the list of formats.
4967
4968 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4969
4970 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4971 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4972 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4973 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4974 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4975 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4976 this problem.)
4977
4978 * New 'maintenance' command
4979
4980 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4981 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4982 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4983
4984 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4985 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4986 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4987 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4988 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4989 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4990
4991 The following commands are new:
4992
4993 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4994 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4995 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4996
4997 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4998
4999 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5000 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5001 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5002 read after argv processing.
5003
5004 * New hosts supported
5005
5006 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5007
5008 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5009
5010 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5011 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5012 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5013 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5014 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5015 It costs extra.
5016
5017 * New targets supported
5018
5019 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5020
5021 * More smarts about finding #include files
5022
5023 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5024 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5025 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5026 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5027 the one that contains your sources.
5028
5029 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5030 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5031 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5032
5033 * Interesting infernals change
5034
5035 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5036 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5037 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5038 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5039
5040 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5041
5042 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5043 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5044 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5045
5046 See the ChangeLog for details.
5047
5048 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5049
5050 * New machines supported (host and target)
5051
5052 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5053
5054 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5055
5056 * New malloc package
5057
5058 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5059 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5060 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5061 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5062 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5063 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5064
5065 * info proc
5066
5067 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5068 'help info proc' for details.
5069
5070 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5071
5072 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5073 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5074 possible.
5075
5076 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5077
5078 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5079 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5080 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5081 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5082 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5083 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5084
5085 * Cross byte order fixes
5086
5087 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5088 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5089
5090 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5091
5092 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5093 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5094 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5095 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5096 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5097 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5098 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5099 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5100 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5101 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5102
5103 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5104 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5105 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5106 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5107
5108 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5109 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5110 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5111 use is:
5112
5113 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5114
5115 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5116 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5117 shared across multiple host platforms.
5118
5119 * longjmp() handling
5120
5121 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5122 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5123 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5124 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5125
5126 * Solaris 2.0
5127
5128 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5129 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5130 reading symbols.
5131
5132 * Bug fixes
5133
5134 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5135 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5136 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5137
5138 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5139
5140 * New machines supported (host and target)
5141
5142 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5143 (except core files)
5144 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5145 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5146
5147 * New machines supported (target)
5148
5149 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5150
5151 * C++ support
5152
5153 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5154 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5155 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5156
5157 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5158 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5159 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5160 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5161 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5162 released.
5163
5164 * New features for SVR4
5165
5166 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5167 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5168 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5169
5170 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5171 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5172 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5173
5174 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5175 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5176
5177 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5178
5179 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5180 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5181 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5182 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5183 same code linked statically.
5184
5185 * New Getopt
5186
5187 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5188 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5189 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5190 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5191 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5192 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5193
5194 * Bugs fixed
5195
5196 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5197 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5198 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5199
5200
5201 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5202
5203 * New machines supported (host and target)
5204
5205 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5206 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5207 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5208
5209 * Almost SCO Unix support
5210
5211 We had hoped to support:
5212 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5213 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5214 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5215 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5216
5217 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5218
5219 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5220 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5221 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5222 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5223 reqired (if any).
5224
5225 * New Readline
5226
5227 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5228 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5229 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5230
5231 * Bugs fixed
5232
5233 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5234 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5235 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5236
5237 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5238
5239 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5240 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5241 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5242
5243 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5244 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5245 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5246 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5247 version 2.
5248
5249 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5250 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5251 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5252 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5253 situation somewhat.
5254
5255 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5256 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5257 methods.
5258
5259 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5260 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5261 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5262
5263
5264 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5265
5266 * Improved configuration
5267
5268 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5269 Porting BFD is simpler.
5270
5271 * Stepping improved
5272
5273 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5274 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5275 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5276 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5277
5278 * Bug fixing
5279
5280 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5281
5282 * New host supported (not target)
5283
5284 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5285
5286
5287 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5288
5289 * Multiple source language support
5290
5291 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5292 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5293 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5294 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5295 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5296 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5297
5298 * GDB and Modula-2
5299
5300 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5301 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5302 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5303 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5304
5305 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5306 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5307 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5308
5309 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5310 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5311
5312 * set write on/off
5313
5314 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5315 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5316 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5317 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5318 effect immediately.
5319
5320 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5321
5322 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5323 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5324 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5325 examining core files.
5326
5327 * set listsize
5328
5329 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5330 The default is 10.
5331
5332 * New machines supported (host and target)
5333
5334 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5335 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5336 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5337
5338 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5339
5340 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5341
5342 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5343
5344 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5345 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5346 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5347
5348 * New remote interfaces
5349
5350 AMD 29000 Adapt
5351 AMD 29000 Minimon
5352
5353
5354 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5355
5356 * New Facilities
5357
5358 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5359
5360 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5361 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5362 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5363 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5364 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5365 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5366 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5367 stub on the target system.
5368
5369 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5370
5371 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5372 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5373 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5374
5375 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5376 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5377
5378
5379 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5380
5381 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5382 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5383
5384 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5385 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5386 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5387
5388 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5389 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5390 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5391 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5392
5393 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5394 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5395 it is already running. Default is ON.
5396
5397 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5398 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5399 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5400 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5401 Default is ON.
5402
5403 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5404 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5405 or the value of the environment variable
5406 GDBHISTFILE.
5407
5408 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5409 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5410 HISTSIZE.
5411
5412 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5413 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5414 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5415
5416 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5417 history expansion will be performed on
5418 command line input. The default is OFF.
5419
5420 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5421 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5422 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5423
5424 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5425 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5426 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5427 variable TERM.
5428
5429 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5430 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5431 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5432 variable TERM.
5433
5434 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5435 ``set width'' instead.
5436
5437 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5438 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5439 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5440 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5441
5442 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5443 is OFF.
5444
5445 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5446 "raw" form if off.
5447
5448 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5449 like instructions.
5450
5451 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5452
5453
5454 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5455
5456 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5457 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5458 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5459 window.
5460
5461
5462 * Support for Shared Libraries
5463
5464 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5465 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5466 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5467 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5468 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5469 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5470 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5471 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5472
5473 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5474 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5475 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5476
5477 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5478
5479
5480 * Watchpoints
5481
5482 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5483 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5484 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5485 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5486 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5487 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5488
5489 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5490
5491 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5492
5493 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5494 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5495 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5496
5497
5498 * C++ multiple inheritance
5499
5500 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5501 for C++ programs.
5502
5503 * C++ exception handling
5504
5505 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5506 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5507 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5508 handler's context).
5509
5510 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5511 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5512 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5513
5514 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5515 current stack frame.
5516
5517
5518 * Minor command changes
5519
5520 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5521 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5522 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5523
5524 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5525 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5526 frames without printing.
5527
5528 * New directory command
5529
5530 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5531 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5532 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5533 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5534 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5535
5536 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5537
5538 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5539 for more details.
5540
5541 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5542 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5543 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5544 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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