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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
7a292a7a
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4*** Changes since GDB-4.18:
5
104c1213
JM
6* New features
7
8On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
9without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
10load symbols from the running process's executable file.
11
7a292a7a
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12* New targets
13
96baa820 14Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
15x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
16PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
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17TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
18
085dd6e6
JM
19* OBSOLETE configurations
20
21Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
22Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 23Pyramid pyramid-*-*
104c1213 24Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 25
adf40b2e
JM
26* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
27
28A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
29sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
30with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
31``|<program> <args>'' vis:
32
33 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
34 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
35
43e526b9
JM
36* MIPS 64 remote protocol
37
38A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
39expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
40instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
41
42The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
43added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
44
96baa820
JM
45* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
46
47The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
48``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
49include ``set remote P-packet''.
50
c906108c
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51*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
52
53* New native configurations
54
55HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
56HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
57M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
58
59* New targets
60
61Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
62Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
63Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
64
65* OBSOLETE configurations
66
67Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
68
69Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
70but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
71these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
72be permanently REMOVED.
73
74* ANSI/ISO C
75
76As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
77buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
78containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
79use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
80available. If this is not true, please report the affected
81configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
82information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
83already.
84
85* Readline 2.2
86
87GDB now uses readline 2.2.
88
89* set extension-language
90
91You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
92languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
93you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
94 set extension-language .c c++
95The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
96and their associated languages.
97
98* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
99
100When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
101you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
102PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
103
104 set processor NAME
105
106sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
107following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
108
109 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
110 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
111 403 IBM PowerPC 403
112 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
113 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
114 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
115 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
116 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
117 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
118 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
119 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
120
121At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
122special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
123registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
124only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
125
126* HP-UX support
127
128Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
129more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
130library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
131support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
132for xdb and dbx commands.
133
134* Catchpoints
135
136HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
137generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
138to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
139
140This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
141argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
142output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
143
144* Debugging across forks
145
146On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
147in the inferior.
148
149* TUI
150
151HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
152it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
153configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
154
155* GDB remote protocol additions
156
157A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
158Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
159fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
160allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
161
162For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
163full 64-bit address. The command
164
165 set remoteaddresssize 32
166
167can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
168the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
169will be discarded.
170
171In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
172command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
173
174 maint packet heythere
175
176sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
177disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
178time.
179
180The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
181target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
182downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
183
184* Tracing can collect general expressions
185
186You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
187further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
188doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
189
190* mask-address variable for Mips
191
192For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
193a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
194of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
195
196* Higher serial baud rates
197
198GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
199230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
200to achieve all of these rates.)
201
202* i960 simulator
203
204The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
205builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
206
207
208*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
209
210* New native configurations
211
212Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
213Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
214Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
215PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
216PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
217Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
218Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
219
220* New targets
221
222Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
223Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
224Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
225Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
226MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
227MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
228MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
229Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
230Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
231Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
232NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
233
234* New debugging protocols
235
236ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
237M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
238DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
239PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
240PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
241Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
242
243* DWARF 2
244
245All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
246format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
247information.
248
249* Java frontend
250
251GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
252only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
253
254* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
255
256For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
257loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
258locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
259
260* Live range splitting
261
262GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
263range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
264more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
265
266* Hurd support
267
268GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
269updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
270
271* ARM Thumb support
272
273GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
274instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
275instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
276accordingly.
277
278* MIPS16 support
279
280GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
281instruction set.
282
283* Overlay support
284
285GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
286linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
287will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
288control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
289additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
290in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
291
292* info symbol
293
294The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
295the symbol at the specified address.
296
297* Trace support
298
299The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
300asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
301extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
302includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
303file tracepoint.c for more details.
304
305* MIPS simulator
306
307Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
308by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
309of most MIPS variants.
310
311* Sparc simulator
312
313Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
314by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
315Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
316
317* set architecture
318
319For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
320basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
321architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
322the possible architectures.
323
324*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
325
326* New native configurations
327
328Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
329M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
330PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
331PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
332PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
333RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
334
335* New targets
336
337ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
338I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
339MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
340MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
341PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
342Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
343Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
344
345* PowerPC simulator
346
347The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
348contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
349PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
350basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
351performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
352
353* Solaris 2.5
354
355GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
356
357* Windows 95/NT native
358
359GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
360To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
361which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
362Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
363ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
364
365* dont-repeat command
366
367If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
368command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
369useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
370extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
371
372* Send break instead of ^C
373
374The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
375rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
376GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
377
378* Remote protocol timeout
379
380The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
381that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
382to read from the target. The default value is 2.
383
384* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
385
386By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
387loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
388stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
389when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
390in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
391
392Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
393/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
394automatically on hpux10.
395
396* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
397
398Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
399
400* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
401
402When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
403may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
404the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
405every character. The default value is 1050.
406
407* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
408
409If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
410a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
411replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
412details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
413remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
414to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
415
416* Speedups for remote debugging
417
418GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
419the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
420and more efficient S-record downloading.
421
422* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
423
424GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
425Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
426
427*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
428
429* Psymtabs for XCOFF
430
431The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
432can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
433
434* Remote targets use caching
435
436Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
437remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
438it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
439debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
440off' turns the the data cache off.
441
442* Remote targets may have threads
443
444The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
445in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
446gdb/remote.c for details.
447
448* NetROM support
449
450If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
451support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
452acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
453write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
454support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
455another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
456sequence is something like
457
458 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
459 load <prog>
460 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
461
462* Macintosh host
463
464GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
465may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
466it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
467available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
468device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
469directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
470scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
471mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
472
473* Autoconf
474
475GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
476but does simplify configuration and building.
477
478* hpux10
479
480GDB now supports hpux10.
481
482*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
483
484* New native configurations
485
486x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
487x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
488NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
489Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
490
491* New targets
492
493A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
494HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
495CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
496PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
497WDC 65816 w65-*-*
498
499* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
500
501GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
502possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
503filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
504the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
505if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
506
507* Arguments to user-defined commands
508
509User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
510Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
511trivial example:
512define adder
513 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
514
515To execute the command use:
516adder 1 2 3
517
518Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
519Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
520use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
521
522* New `if' and `while' commands
523
524This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
525commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
526expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
527execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
528terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
529`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
530if the expression is zero.
531
532* Fortran source language mode
533
534GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
535Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
536variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
537with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
538Fortran compilers.
539
540* Better HPUX support
541
542Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
543running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
544processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
545for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
546that behavior do the following before running the program:
547
548 adb -w a.out
549 __dld_flags?W 0x5
550 control-d
551
552This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
553To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
554
555 adb -w a.out
556 __dld_flags?W 0x4
557 control-d
558
559You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
560the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
561external linkage.
562
563GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
564HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
565
566* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
567
568You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
569commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
570current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
571"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
572associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
573configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
574
575* New DOS host serial code
576
577This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
578no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
579a PC's serial port.
580
581*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
582
583* New "complete" command
584
585This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
586were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
587
588* Trailing space optional in prompt
589
590"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
591allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
592
593* Breakpoint hit counts
594
595"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
596has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
597can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
598to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
599less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
600that breakpoint.
601
602* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
603
604"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
605an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
606arrays actually contain only short strings.
607
608* Shared library breakpoints
609
610In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
611breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
612
613* Hardware watchpoints
614
615There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
616targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
617
618Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
619
620* Annotations
621
622Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
623and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
624
625* Improved Irix 5 support
626
627GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
628
629* Improved HPPA support
630
631GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
632
633* New native configurations
634
635Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
636HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
637Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
638RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
639
640* New targets
641
642OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
643MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
644Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
645
646* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
647
648There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
649This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
650
651* Fixes
652
653As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
654and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
655
656*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
657
658* Irix 5 is now supported
659
660* HPPA support
661
662GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
663to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
664GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
665of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
666can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
667
668
669*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
670
671* User visible changes:
672
673* Remote Debugging
674
675The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
676target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
677debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
678integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
679debugging info for the mips target).
680
681* DEC Alpha native support
682
683GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
684debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
685work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
686Alpha-specific notes.
687
688* Preliminary thread implementation
689
690GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
691
692* LynxOS native and target support for 386
693
694This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
695to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
696for details).
697
698* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
699
700This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
701mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
702call methods, ...etc.
703
704*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
705
706 * User visible changes:
707
708Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
709supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
710other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
711somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
712
713Filename completion now works.
714
715When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
716arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
717addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
718
719All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
720vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
721should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
722your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
723to be on the far side of a thin network line.
724
725 * DEC alpha support
726
727This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
728cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
729
730
731*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
732
733 * Testsuite
734
735This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
736The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
737via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
738
739 * C++ demangling
740
741'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
742emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
743Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
744disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
745use gdb with AT&T cfront.
746
747 * Simulators
748
749GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
750So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
751Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
752
753 * New targets supported
754
755H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
756H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
757SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
758Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
759IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
760
761Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
762version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
763GO32 memory extender.
764
765 * New remote protocols
766
767MIPS remote debugging protocol.
768
769 * New source languages supported
770
771This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
772used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
773into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
774
775
776*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
777
778 * HP Precision Architecture supported
779
780GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
781version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
782University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
783compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
784format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
785(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
786
787Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
788
789 * Faster and better demangling
790
791We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
792demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
793character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
794only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
795This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
796increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
797symbol lookups.
798
799`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
800from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
801compiler does not actually implement.
802
803 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
804
805In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
806inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
807recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
808very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
809The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
810circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
811fix.
812
813The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
814release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
815
816 * Improved configure script
817
818The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
819you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
820host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
821done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
822
823We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
824version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
825`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
826The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
827only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
828We hope to make this the default in a future release.
829
830 * Documentation improvements
831
832There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
833produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
834before submitting changes.
835
836The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
837M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
838`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
839you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
840a future texinfo-X.Y release.
841
842*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
843We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
844been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
845or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
846`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
847around this problem.
848
849 * New features
850
851GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
852the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
853`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
854the target program.
855
856The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
857how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
858
859 * New native hosts supported
860
861HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
862386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
863
864 * New targets supported
865
866AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
867
868 * New file formats supported
869
870BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
871HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
872
873 * Major bug fixes
874
875Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
876
877We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
878printf_filtered("%s") problems.
879
880We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
881for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
882release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
883
884You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
885will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
886
887We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
888for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
889especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
890libraries.
891
892The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
893information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
894command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
895any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
896when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
897
898 * Internal improvements
899
900GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
901debugging of multiple languages in the future.
902
903GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
904Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
905symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
906contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
907shared code that handles any of them.
908
909 * New command line options
910
911We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
912
913 * Mmalloc licensing
914
915The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
916General Public License.
917
918*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
919
920 * Host/native/target split
921
922GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
923hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
924target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
925local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
926ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
927
928The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
929GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
930is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
931code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
932any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
933built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
934handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
935
936GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
937It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
938plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
939
940 * New hosts supported
941
942HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
943386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
944386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
945
946 * New targets supported
947
948Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
94968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
950
951 * New native hosts supported
952
953386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
954 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
955386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
956
957 * New file formats supported
958
959BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
960supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
961format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
962
963 * New commands
964
965`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
966`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
967These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
968
969`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
970
971You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
972scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
973prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
974executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
975
976 * C++ improvements
977
978We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
979info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
980symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
981
982Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
983
984 * Major bug fixes
985
986The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
987fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
988by the compiler.
989
990We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
991support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
992
993John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
994slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
995that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
996purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
997the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
998mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
999
1000Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1001about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1002completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1003we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1004
1005 * AMD 29k support
1006
1007A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1008specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1009calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1010usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1011in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1012
1013We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1014Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1015of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1016resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1017
1018 * Remote interfaces
1019
1020We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1021with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1022message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1023This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1024needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1025breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1026each instruction being stepped through.
1027
1028The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1029registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1030
1031There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1032find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1033Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1034processor with a serial port.
1035
1036 * Configuration
1037
1038Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1039`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1040supported, and what files each one uses.
1041
1042 * Library changes
1043
1044There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1045disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1046Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1047disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1048
1049The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1050Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1051can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1052grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1053
1054 * Documentation
1055
1056The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1057reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1058as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1059encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1060system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1061bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1062
1063And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1064
1065
1066*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1067
1068 * Better support for C++ function names
1069
1070GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1071names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1072(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1073single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1074Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1075
1076GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1077the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1078You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1079lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1080for the list of formats.
1081
1082 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1083
1084Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1085C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1086directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1087can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1088usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1089about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1090this problem.)
1091
1092 * New 'maintenance' command
1093
1094All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1095the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1096can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1097
1098 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1099 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1100 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1101 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1102 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1103 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1104
1105The following commands are new:
1106
1107 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1108 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1109 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1110
1111 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1112
1113We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1114(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1115be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1116read after argv processing.
1117
1118 * New hosts supported
1119
1120Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1121
1122Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1123
1124We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1125is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1126for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1127masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1128fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1129It costs extra.
1130
1131 * New targets supported
1132
1133Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1134
1135 * More smarts about finding #include files
1136
1137GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1138all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1139greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1140especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1141the one that contains your sources.
1142
1143We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1144breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1145try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1146
1147 * Interesting infernals change
1148
1149GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1150section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1151target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1152stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1153
1154 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1155
1156There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1157 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1158 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1159
1160See the ChangeLog for details.
1161
1162*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1163
1164 * New machines supported (host and target)
1165
1166IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1167
1168SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1169
1170 * New malloc package
1171
1172GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1173Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1174capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1175This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1176pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1177more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1178
1179 * info proc
1180
1181The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1182'help info proc' for details.
1183
1184 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1185
1186The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1187Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1188possible.
1189
1190 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1191
1192Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1193support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1194conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1195environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1196that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1197in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1198
1199 * Cross byte order fixes
1200
1201Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1202targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1203
1204 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1205
1206If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1207system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1208`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1209program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1210called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1211Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1212and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1213the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1214option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1215starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1216
1217You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1218the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1219information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1220slower, but makes future operations faster.
1221
1222The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1223build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1224A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1225use is:
1226
1227 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1228
1229The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1230It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1231shared across multiple host platforms.
1232
1233 * longjmp() handling
1234
1235GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1236siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1237all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1238platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1239
1240 * Solaris 2.0
1241
1242Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1243this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1244reading symbols.
1245
1246 * Bug fixes
1247
1248As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1249People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1250crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1251
1252*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1253
1254 * New machines supported (host and target)
1255
1256SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1257 (except core files)
1258BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1259Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1260
1261 * New machines supported (target)
1262
1263AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1264
1265 * C++ support
1266
1267GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1268The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1269per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1270
1271GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1272`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1273extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1274good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1275will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1276released.
1277
1278 * New features for SVR4
1279
1280GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1281shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1282only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1283
1284The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1285on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1286it prints the address mappings of the process.
1287
1288If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1289bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1290
1291 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1292
1293Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1294now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1295skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1296make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1297same code linked statically.
1298
1299 * New Getopt
1300
1301GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1302version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1303continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1304Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1305added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1306future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1307
1308 * Bugs fixed
1309
1310The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1311Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1312See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1313
1314
1315*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1316
1317 * New machines supported (host and target)
1318
1319Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1320NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1321Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1322
1323 * Almost SCO Unix support
1324
1325We had hoped to support:
1326SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1327(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1328that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1329about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1330
1331 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1332
1333GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1334debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1335is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1336send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1337reqired (if any).
1338
1339 * New Readline
1340
1341GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1342is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1343required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1344
1345 * Bugs fixed
1346
1347The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1348Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1349See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1350
1351 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1352
1353GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1354supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1355symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1356
1357Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1358mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1359debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1360mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1361version 2.
1362
1363Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1364really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1365line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1366variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1367situation somewhat.
1368
1369When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1370However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1371methods.
1372
1373We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1374DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1375encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1376
1377
1378*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1379
1380 * Improved configuration
1381
1382Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1383Porting BFD is simpler.
1384
1385 * Stepping improved
1386
1387The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1388of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1389in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1390function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1391
1392 * Bug fixing
1393
1394Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1395
1396 * New host supported (not target)
1397
1398Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1399
1400
1401*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1402
1403 * Multiple source language support
1404
1405GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1406It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1407and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1408language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1409You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1410`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1411
1412 * GDB and Modula-2
1413
1414GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1415currently under development at the State University of New York at
1416Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1417continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1418
1419Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1420debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1421symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1422
1423There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1424in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1425
1426 * set write on/off
1427
1428GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1429a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1430the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1431by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1432effect immediately.
1433
1434 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1435
1436When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1437shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1438The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1439examining core files.
1440
1441 * set listsize
1442
1443You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1444The default is 10.
1445
1446 * New machines supported (host and target)
1447
1448SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1449Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1450Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1451
1452 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1453
1454IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1455
1456 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1457
1458AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1459AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1460Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1461
1462 * New remote interfaces
1463
1464AMD 29000 Adapt
1465AMD 29000 Minimon
1466
1467
1468*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1469
1470 * New Facilities
1471
1472Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1473
1474Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1475target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1476is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1477remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1478remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1479also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1480using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1481stub on the target system.
1482
1483New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1484
1485GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1486library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1487object file types such as a.out and coff.
1488
1489There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1490refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1491
1492
1493 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1494
1495All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1496by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1497
1498For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1499``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1500Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1501
1502What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1503print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1504will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1505all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1506
1507confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1508 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1509 it is already running. Default is ON.
1510
1511editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1512 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1513 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1514 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1515 Default is ON.
1516
1517history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1518 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1519 or the value of the environment variable
1520 GDBHISTFILE.
1521
1522history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1523 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1524 HISTSIZE.
1525
1526history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1527 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1528 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1529
1530history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1531 history expansion will be performed on
1532 command line input. The default is OFF.
1533
1534radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1535 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1536 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1537
1538height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1539 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1540 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1541 variable TERM.
1542
1543width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1544 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1545 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1546 variable TERM.
1547
1548Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1549``set width'' instead.
1550
1551print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1552 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1553 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1554 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1555
1556print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1557 is OFF.
1558
1559print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1560 "raw" form if off.
1561
1562print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1563 like instructions.
1564
1565print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1566
1567
1568 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1569
1570The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1571new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1572are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1573window.
1574
1575
1576 * Support for Shared Libraries
1577
1578GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1579Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1580before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1581happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1582At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1583from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1584shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1585It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1586
1587sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1588 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1589 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1590
1591info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1592
1593
1594 * Watchpoints
1595
1596A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1597expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1598tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1599quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1600problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1601more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1602
1603watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1604
1605info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1606
1607delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1608disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1609enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1610
1611
1612 * C++ multiple inheritance
1613
1614When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1615for C++ programs.
1616
1617 * C++ exception handling
1618
1619Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1620ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1621the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1622handler's context).
1623
1624catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1625 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1626 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1627
1628info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1629 current stack frame.
1630
1631
1632 * Minor command changes
1633
1634The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1635command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1636is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1637
1638The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1639at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1640frames without printing.
1641
1642 * New directory command
1643
1644'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1645The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1646about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1647with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1648find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1649
1650 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1651
1652For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1653for more details.
1654
1655GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1656two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1657Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1658where the program that you are debugging will run.