]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git/blame - gdb/NEWS
2003-10-10 Kei Sakamoto <sakamoto.kei@renesas.com>
[thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.0:
5
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6* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
7
8The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
9and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
10tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
11
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12* REMOVED configurations and files
13
14SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
15SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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16Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
17Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
18H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
19HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
20HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
21HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
22PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
23Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
24 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
25 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
26Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
27Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 28
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29*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
30
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31* Objective-C
32
33Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
34integrated into GDB.
35
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36* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
37
38DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
39information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
40By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
41backtraces.
42
43The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
44have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
45DWARF 2 CFI support.
46
47* Hosted file I/O.
48
49GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
50file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
51remote protocol documentation for details.
52
53* All targets using the new architecture framework.
54
55All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
56architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
57to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
58ppc32 on ppc64).
59
60* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
61
62GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
63per-thread variables.
64
65* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
66
67GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
68GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
69
70* Separate debug info.
71
72GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
73automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
74of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
75system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
76and optional debug files.
77
78* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
79
80DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
81describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
82debugger.
83
84GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
85for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
86
87* Java
88
89A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
90Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
91considered "useable".
92
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93* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
94
95The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
96commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
97kernel.
98
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99* GDB supports logging output to a file
100
101There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
102used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 103
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104* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
105
106The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
107disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
108command.
109
e286caf2 110* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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111
112The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
113registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
114
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115* Profiling support
116
117A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
118be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
119session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
120"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
121data, for more informative profiling results.
122
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123* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
124
125The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
126option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 127"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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128
129Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
130removed.
131
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132Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
133Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
134Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
135 in a subsequent -var-update.
136
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137* New native configurations.
138
139FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
140
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141* Multi-arched targets.
142
b4263afa 143HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
880bc914 144Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 145
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146* OBSOLETE configurations and files
147
148Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
149been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
150configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
151permanently REMOVED.
152
8b0e5691 153Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 154Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 155H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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156HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
157HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
158HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 159PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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160Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
161 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
162 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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163Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
164Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 165
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166* REMOVED configurations and files
167
168V850EA ISA
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169Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
170IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
171i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
172i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
173i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
174HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
175 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
176 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
177Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
178Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
179Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
180OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
181I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 182
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183* MIPS $fp behavior changed
184
185The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
186the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
187context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
188address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
189The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
190
299ffc64 191*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 192
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193* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
194
195When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
196`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
197in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
198library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
199shared libs like mad''.
200
b9d14705 201* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 202
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203Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
204the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
205arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
206powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 207
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208* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
209
210GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
211and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
212they expand.
213
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214The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
215invocations in expression, and shows the result.
216
217The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
218macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
219
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220Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
221information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
222your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
223information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
224
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225* Multi-arched targets.
226
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227DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
228DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 229NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 230National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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231Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
232Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 233
cd9bfe15 234* New targets.
e33ce519 235
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236Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
237
e33ce519 238
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239* New native configurations
240
241Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 242SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 243MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 244UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 245
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246* OBSOLETE configurations and files
247
248Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
249been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
250configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
251permanently REMOVED.
252
92eb23c5 253Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 254OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 255IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 256Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 257Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 258Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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259i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
260i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
261i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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262HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
263 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
264 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 265I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 266
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267* OBSOLETE languages
268
269CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
270
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271* REMOVED configurations and files
272
273AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
274A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
275AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
276AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
277AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
278
279testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
280
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281* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
282
283This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
284commands. The default is 1024.
285
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286* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
287
288Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
289
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290* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
291
292These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
293to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
294from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 295
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296* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
297
298The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
299including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
300of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
301
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302*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
303
304* New targets.
305
306Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
307
308* Bug fixes
309
310gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
311mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
312Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
313
314gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
315dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
316Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
317
318Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
319Surprisingly enough, it works now.
320By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
321
322i386 hardware watchpoint support:
323avoid misses on second run for some targets.
324By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
325
37057839 326*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 327
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328* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
329
330This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
331really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
332In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
333target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
334This can be a significant performance improvement on some
335(notably embedded) targets.
336
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337* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
338
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339This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
340process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
341GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
342hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 343
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344* New command line option
345
346GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
347
348* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
349
350There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
351command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
352a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
353be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
354open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
355issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
356a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
357it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
358GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
359is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
360
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361* Changes in ARM configurations.
362
363Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
364configuration is fully multi-arch.
365
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366* New native configurations
367
fe419ffc 368ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 369x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 370AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 371Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 372
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373* New targets
374
375Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
376
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377* OBSOLETE configurations and files
378
379Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
380been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
381configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
382permanently REMOVED.
383
384AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
385A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
386AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
387AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
388AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
389
b4ceaee6 390testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 391
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392* REMOVED configurations and files
393
394TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 395WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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396PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
397PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
398PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 399Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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400Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
401 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 402SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 403Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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404Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
405ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 406Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 407
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408* Changes to command line processing
409
410The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
411for the inferior from gdb's command line.
412
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413* Changes to key bindings
414
415There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
416
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417*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
418
419Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
420
421Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
422corrupted.
423
424Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
425
426Numerous documentation fixes.
427
428Numerous testsuite fixes.
429
34f47bc4 430*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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431
432* New native configurations
433
434Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
435x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 436MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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437MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
438ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 439s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 440
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441* New targets
442
def90278 443Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 444CRIS cris-axis
55241689 445UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 446
17e78a56 447* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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448
449x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 450Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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451Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
452 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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453TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
454WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 455Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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456PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
457PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
458PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 459SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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460Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
461ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 462Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 463
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464stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
465kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
466
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467Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
468been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
469configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
470permanently REMOVED.
471
a196c81c 472* REMOVED configurations and files
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473
474Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
475Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
476Pyramid pyramid-*-*
477ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
478Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 479ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 480
6d6b80e5 481* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 482
6d6b80e5 483GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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484sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
485present.
486
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487* Other news:
488
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489* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
490
491* The MI enabled by default.
492
493The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
494revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
495engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
496using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
497which is now deprecated.
498
499* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
500
501GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
502main features are supported:
503
504 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
505
506 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
507 extension;
508
509 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
510
511 - a Pascal expression parser.
512
513However, some important features are not yet supported.
514
515 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
516
517 - there are some problems with boolean types;
518
519 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
520 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
521
522 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
523
524 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
525
526* Changes in completion.
527
528Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
529to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
530users expect at the shell prompt.
531
532Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
533`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
534program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
535files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
536be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
537considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
538name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
539
540`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
541
542* New platform-independent commands:
543
544It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
545hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
546documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
547
548* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
549
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550Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
551revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
552many threads as your system allows you to have.
553
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554Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
555
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MK
556Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
557multi-threaded programs though.
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558
559* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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560
561Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
562
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563GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
564debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
565supported.)
566
567* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
568
569Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
570breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
571implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
572put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
573and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
574registers.
575
576The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
577debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
578watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
579
580* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
581
582New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
583the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
584
585New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
586display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
587IDT.
588
589New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
590from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
591New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
592a given linear address.
593
594GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
595program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
596which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
597
598DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
599
6c56c069
EZ
600It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
601
e23194cb
EZ
602* Changes in documentation.
603
604All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
605Documentation License.
606
607Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
608manual.
609
610TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
611
612Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
613manual.
614
615The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
616documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
617hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
618
5d6640b1
AC
619* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
620
621The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
622``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
623contents of this file.
624
1a1d8446
AC
625* gdba.el deleted
626
627GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 628
9debab2f 629*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 630
c63ce875
EZ
631* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
632
633Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
634programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
635displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
636greater level of detail.
637
638* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
639
640It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
641bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
642on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
643written.
644
645* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
646
647The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
648necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
649machines ``out of the box''.
650
651The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
652possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
653signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
654would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
655interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
656
657It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
658standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
659even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
660and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
661terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
662
663The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
664enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
665also works.
666
667DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
668GDB.
669
670It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
671directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
672times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
673breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
674
ed9a39eb
JM
675* New native configurations
676
677ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 678PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 679
7a292a7a
SS
680* New targets
681
96baa820 682Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
683x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
684PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
685TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
686
085dd6e6
JM
687* OBSOLETE configurations
688
689Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
690Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 691Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 692ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 693Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 694
9debab2f
AC
695Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
696but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
697these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
698be permanently REMOVED.
699
5330533d
SS
700* Gould support removed
701
702Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
703
bc9e5bbf
AC
704* New features for SVR4
705
706On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
707without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
708load symbols from the running process's executable file.
709
710* Many C++ enhancements
711
712C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
713in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
714
adf40b2e
JM
715* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
716
717A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
718sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
719with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
720``|<program> <args>'' vis:
721
722 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
723 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
724
43e526b9
JM
725* MIPS 64 remote protocol
726
727A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
728expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
729instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
730
731The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
732added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
733
96baa820
JM
734* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
735
736The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
737``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
738include ``set remote P-packet''.
739
11cf8741
JM
740* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
741
742The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
743accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
744``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
745
7876dd43
DB
746* ``apropos'' command added.
747
748The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
749documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
750try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
751
bc9e5bbf
AC
752* New MI interface
753
754A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
755interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
756process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
757"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
758enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
759
760 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
761
c906108c
SS
762*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
763
764* New native configurations
765
766HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
767HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 768M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
769
770* New targets
771
772Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
773Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
774Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
775
776* OBSOLETE configurations
777
778Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
779
780Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
781but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
782these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
783be permanently REMOVED.
784
785* ANSI/ISO C
786
787As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
788buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
789containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
790use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
791available. If this is not true, please report the affected
792configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
793information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
794already.
795
796* Readline 2.2
797
798GDB now uses readline 2.2.
799
800* set extension-language
801
802You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
803languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
804you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
805 set extension-language .c c++
806The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
807and their associated languages.
808
809* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
810
811When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
812you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
813PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
814
815 set processor NAME
816
817sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
818following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
819
820 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
821 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
822 403 IBM PowerPC 403
823 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
824 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
825 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
826 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
827 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
828 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
829 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
830 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
831
832At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
833special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
834registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
835only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
836
837* HP-UX support
838
839Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
840more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
841library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
842support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
843for xdb and dbx commands.
844
845* Catchpoints
846
847HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
848generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
849to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
850
851This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
852argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
853output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
854
855* Debugging across forks
856
857On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
858in the inferior.
859
860* TUI
861
862HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
863it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
864configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
865
866* GDB remote protocol additions
867
868A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
869Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
870fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
871allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
872
873For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
874full 64-bit address. The command
875
876 set remoteaddresssize 32
877
878can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
879the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
880will be discarded.
881
882In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
883command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
884
885 maint packet heythere
886
887sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
888disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
889time.
890
891The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
892target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
893downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
894
895* Tracing can collect general expressions
896
897You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
898further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
899doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
900
901* mask-address variable for Mips
902
903For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
904a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
905of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
906
907* Higher serial baud rates
908
909GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
910230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
911to achieve all of these rates.)
912
913* i960 simulator
914
915The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
916builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
917
918
919*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
920
921* New native configurations
922
923Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
924Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
925Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
926PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
927PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
928Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
929Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
930
931* New targets
932
933Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
934Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
935Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
936Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
937MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
938MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
939MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
940Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
941Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
942Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
943NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
944
945* New debugging protocols
946
947ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
948M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
949DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
950PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
951PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
952Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
953
954* DWARF 2
955
956All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
957format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
958information.
959
960* Java frontend
961
962GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
963only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
964
965* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
966
967For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
968loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
969locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
970
971* Live range splitting
972
973GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
974range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
975more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
976
977* Hurd support
978
979GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
980updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
981
982* ARM Thumb support
983
984GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
985instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
986instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
987accordingly.
988
989* MIPS16 support
990
991GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
992instruction set.
993
994* Overlay support
995
996GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
997linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
998will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
999control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1000additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1001in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1002
1003* info symbol
1004
1005The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1006the symbol at the specified address.
1007
1008* Trace support
1009
1010The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1011asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1012extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1013includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1014file tracepoint.c for more details.
1015
1016* MIPS simulator
1017
1018Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1019by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1020of most MIPS variants.
1021
1022* Sparc simulator
1023
1024Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1025by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1026Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1027
1028* set architecture
1029
1030For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1031basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1032architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1033the possible architectures.
1034
1035*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1036
1037* New native configurations
1038
1039Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1040M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1041PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1042PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1043PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1044RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1045
1046* New targets
1047
1048ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1049I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1050MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1051MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1052PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1053Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1054Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1055
1056* PowerPC simulator
1057
1058The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1059contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1060PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1061basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1062performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1063
1064* Solaris 2.5
1065
1066GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1067
1068* Windows 95/NT native
1069
1070GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1071To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1072which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1073Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1074ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1075
1076* dont-repeat command
1077
1078If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1079command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1080useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1081extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1082
1083* Send break instead of ^C
1084
1085The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1086rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1087GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1088
1089* Remote protocol timeout
1090
1091The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1092that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1093to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1094
1095* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1096
1097By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1098loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1099stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1100when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1101in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1102
1103Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1104/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1105automatically on hpux10.
1106
1107* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1108
1109Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1110
1111* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1112
1113When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1114may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1115the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1116every character. The default value is 1050.
1117
1118* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1119
1120If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1121a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1122replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1123details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1124remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1125to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1126
1127* Speedups for remote debugging
1128
1129GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1130the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1131and more efficient S-record downloading.
1132
1133* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1134
1135GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1136Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1137
1138*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1139
1140* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1141
1142The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1143can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1144
1145* Remote targets use caching
1146
1147Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1148remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1149it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1150debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1151off' turns the the data cache off.
1152
1153* Remote targets may have threads
1154
1155The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1156in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1157gdb/remote.c for details.
1158
1159* NetROM support
1160
1161If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1162support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1163acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1164write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1165support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1166another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1167sequence is something like
1168
1169 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1170 load <prog>
1171 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1172
1173* Macintosh host
1174
1175GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1176may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1177it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1178available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1179device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1180directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1181scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1182mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1183
1184* Autoconf
1185
1186GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1187but does simplify configuration and building.
1188
1189* hpux10
1190
1191GDB now supports hpux10.
1192
1193*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1194
1195* New native configurations
1196
1197x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1198x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1199NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1200Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1201
1202* New targets
1203
1204A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1205HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1206CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1207PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1208WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1209
1210* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1211
1212GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1213possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1214filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1215the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1216if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1217
1218* Arguments to user-defined commands
1219
1220User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1221Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1222trivial example:
1223define adder
1224 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1225
1226To execute the command use:
1227adder 1 2 3
1228
1229Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1230Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1231use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1232
1233* New `if' and `while' commands
1234
1235This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1236commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1237expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1238execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1239terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1240`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1241if the expression is zero.
1242
1243* Fortran source language mode
1244
1245GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1246Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1247variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1248with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1249Fortran compilers.
1250
1251* Better HPUX support
1252
1253Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1254running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1255processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1256for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1257that behavior do the following before running the program:
1258
1259 adb -w a.out
1260 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1261 control-d
1262
1263This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1264To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1265
1266 adb -w a.out
1267 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1268 control-d
1269
1270You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1271the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1272external linkage.
1273
1274GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1275HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1276
1277* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1278
1279You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1280commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1281current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1282"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1283associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1284configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1285
1286* New DOS host serial code
1287
1288This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1289no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1290a PC's serial port.
1291
1292*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1293
1294* New "complete" command
1295
1296This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1297were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1298
1299* Trailing space optional in prompt
1300
1301"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1302allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1303
1304* Breakpoint hit counts
1305
1306"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1307has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1308can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1309to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1310less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1311that breakpoint.
1312
1313* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1314
1315"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1316an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1317arrays actually contain only short strings.
1318
1319* Shared library breakpoints
1320
1321In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1322breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1323
1324* Hardware watchpoints
1325
1326There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1327targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1328
55241689 1329Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1330
1331* Annotations
1332
1333Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1334and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1335
1336* Improved Irix 5 support
1337
1338GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1339
1340* Improved HPPA support
1341
1342GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1343
1344* New native configurations
1345
1346Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1347HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1348Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1349RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1350
1351* New targets
1352
1353OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1354MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1355Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1356
1357* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1358
1359There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1360This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1361
1362* Fixes
1363
1364As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1365and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1366
1367*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1368
1369* Irix 5 is now supported
1370
1371* HPPA support
1372
1373GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1374to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1375GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1376of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1377can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1378
1379
1380*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1381
1382* User visible changes:
1383
1384* Remote Debugging
1385
1386The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1387target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1388debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1389integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1390debugging info for the mips target).
1391
1392* DEC Alpha native support
1393
1394GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1395debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1396work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1397Alpha-specific notes.
1398
1399* Preliminary thread implementation
1400
1401GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1402
1403* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1404
1405This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1406to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1407for details).
1408
1409* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1410
1411This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1412mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1413call methods, ...etc.
1414
1415*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1416
1417 * User visible changes:
1418
1419Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1420supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1421other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1422somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1423
1424Filename completion now works.
1425
1426When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1427arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1428addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1429
1430All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1431vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1432should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1433your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1434to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1435
1436 * DEC alpha support
1437
1438This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1439cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1440
1441
1442*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1443
1444 * Testsuite
1445
1446This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1447The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1448via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1449
1450 * C++ demangling
1451
1452'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1453emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1454Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1455disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1456use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1457
1458 * Simulators
1459
1460GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1461So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1462Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1463
1464 * New targets supported
1465
1466H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1467H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1468SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1469Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1470IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1471
1472Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1473version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1474GO32 memory extender.
1475
1476 * New remote protocols
1477
1478MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1479
1480 * New source languages supported
1481
1482This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1483used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1484into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1485
1486
1487*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1488
1489 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1490
1491GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1492version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1493University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1494compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1495format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1496(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1497
1498Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1499
1500 * Faster and better demangling
1501
1502We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1503demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1504character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1505only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1506This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1507increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1508symbol lookups.
1509
1510`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1511from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1512compiler does not actually implement.
1513
1514 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1515
1516In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1517inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1518recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1519very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1520The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1521circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1522fix.
1523
1524The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1525release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1526
1527 * Improved configure script
1528
1529The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1530you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1531host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1532done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1533
1534We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1535version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1536`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1537The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1538only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1539We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1540
1541 * Documentation improvements
1542
1543There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1544produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1545before submitting changes.
1546
1547The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1548M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1549`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1550you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1551a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1552
1553*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1554We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1555been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1556or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1557`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1558around this problem.
1559
1560 * New features
1561
1562GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1563the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1564`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1565the target program.
1566
1567The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1568how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1569
1570 * New native hosts supported
1571
1572HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1573386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1574
1575 * New targets supported
1576
1577AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1578
1579 * New file formats supported
1580
1581BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1582HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1583
1584 * Major bug fixes
1585
1586Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1587
1588We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1589printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1590
1591We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1592for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1593release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1594
1595You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1596will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1597
1598We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1599for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1600especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1601libraries.
1602
1603The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1604information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1605command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1606any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1607when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1608
1609 * Internal improvements
1610
1611GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1612debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1613
1614GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1615Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1616symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1617contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1618shared code that handles any of them.
1619
1620 * New command line options
1621
1622We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1623
1624 * Mmalloc licensing
1625
1626The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1627General Public License.
1628
1629*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1630
1631 * Host/native/target split
1632
1633GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1634hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1635target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1636local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1637ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1638
1639The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1640GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1641is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1642code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1643any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1644built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1645handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1646
1647GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1648It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1649plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1650
1651 * New hosts supported
1652
1653HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1654386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1655386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1656
1657 * New targets supported
1658
1659Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
166068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1661
1662 * New native hosts supported
1663
1664386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1665 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1666386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1667
1668 * New file formats supported
1669
1670BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1671supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1672format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1673
1674 * New commands
1675
1676`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1677`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1678These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1679
1680`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1681
1682You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1683scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1684prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1685executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1686
1687 * C++ improvements
1688
1689We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1690info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1691symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1692
1693Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1694
1695 * Major bug fixes
1696
1697The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1698fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1699by the compiler.
1700
1701We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1702support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1703
1704John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1705slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1706that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1707purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1708the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1709mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1710
1711Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1712about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1713completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1714we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1715
1716 * AMD 29k support
1717
1718A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1719specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1720calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1721usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1722in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1723
1724We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1725Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1726of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1727resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1728
1729 * Remote interfaces
1730
1731We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1732with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1733message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1734This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1735needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1736breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1737each instruction being stepped through.
1738
1739The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1740registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1741
1742There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1743find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1744Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1745processor with a serial port.
1746
1747 * Configuration
1748
1749Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1750`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1751supported, and what files each one uses.
1752
1753 * Library changes
1754
1755There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1756disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1757Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1758disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1759
1760The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1761Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1762can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1763grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1764
1765 * Documentation
1766
1767The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1768reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1769as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1770encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1771system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1772bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1773
1774And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1775
1776
1777*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1778
1779 * Better support for C++ function names
1780
1781GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1782names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1783(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1784single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1785Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1786
1787GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1788the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1789You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1790lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1791for the list of formats.
1792
1793 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1794
1795Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1796C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1797directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1798can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1799usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1800about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1801this problem.)
1802
1803 * New 'maintenance' command
1804
1805All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1806the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1807can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1808
1809 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1810 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1811 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1812 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1813 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1814 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1815
1816The following commands are new:
1817
1818 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1819 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1820 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1821
1822 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1823
1824We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1825(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1826be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1827read after argv processing.
1828
1829 * New hosts supported
1830
1831Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1832
55241689 1833GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1834
1835We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1836is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1837for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1838masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1839fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1840It costs extra.
1841
1842 * New targets supported
1843
1844Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1845
1846 * More smarts about finding #include files
1847
1848GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1849all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1850greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1851especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1852the one that contains your sources.
1853
1854We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1855breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1856try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1857
1858 * Interesting infernals change
1859
1860GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1861section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1862target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1863stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1864
1865 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1866
1867There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1868 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1869 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1870
1871See the ChangeLog for details.
1872
1873*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1874
1875 * New machines supported (host and target)
1876
1877IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1878
1879SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1880
1881 * New malloc package
1882
1883GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1884Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1885capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1886This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1887pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1888more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1889
1890 * info proc
1891
1892The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1893'help info proc' for details.
1894
1895 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1896
1897The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1898Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1899possible.
1900
1901 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1902
1903Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1904support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1905conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1906environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1907that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1908in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1909
1910 * Cross byte order fixes
1911
1912Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1913targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1914
1915 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1916
1917If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1918system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1919`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1920program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1921called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1922Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1923and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1924the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1925option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1926starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1927
1928You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1929the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1930information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1931slower, but makes future operations faster.
1932
1933The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1934build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1935A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1936use is:
1937
1938 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1939
1940The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1941It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1942shared across multiple host platforms.
1943
1944 * longjmp() handling
1945
1946GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1947siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1948all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1949platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1950
1951 * Solaris 2.0
1952
1953Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1954this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1955reading symbols.
1956
1957 * Bug fixes
1958
1959As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1960People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1961crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1962
1963*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1964
1965 * New machines supported (host and target)
1966
1967SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1968 (except core files)
1969BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1970Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1971
1972 * New machines supported (target)
1973
1974AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1975
1976 * C++ support
1977
1978GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1979The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1980per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1981
1982GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1983`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1984extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1985good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1986will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1987released.
1988
1989 * New features for SVR4
1990
1991GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1992shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1993only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1994
1995The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1996on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1997it prints the address mappings of the process.
1998
1999If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2000bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2001
2002 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2003
2004Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2005now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2006skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2007make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2008same code linked statically.
2009
2010 * New Getopt
2011
2012GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2013version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2014continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2015Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2016added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2017future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2018
2019 * Bugs fixed
2020
2021The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2022Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2023See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2024
2025
2026*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2027
2028 * New machines supported (host and target)
2029
2030Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2031NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2032Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2033
2034 * Almost SCO Unix support
2035
2036We had hoped to support:
2037SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2038(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2039that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2040about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2041
2042 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2043
2044GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2045debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2046is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2047send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2048reqired (if any).
2049
2050 * New Readline
2051
2052GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2053is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2054required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2055
2056 * Bugs fixed
2057
2058The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2059Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2060See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2061
2062 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2063
2064GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2065supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2066symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2067
2068Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2069mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2070debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2071mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2072version 2.
2073
2074Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2075really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2076line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2077variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2078situation somewhat.
2079
2080When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2081However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2082methods.
2083
2084We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2085DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2086encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2087
2088
2089*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2090
2091 * Improved configuration
2092
2093Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2094Porting BFD is simpler.
2095
2096 * Stepping improved
2097
2098The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2099of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2100in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2101function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2102
2103 * Bug fixing
2104
2105Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2106
2107 * New host supported (not target)
2108
2109Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2110
2111
2112*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2113
2114 * Multiple source language support
2115
2116GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2117It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2118and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2119language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2120You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2121`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2122
2123 * GDB and Modula-2
2124
2125GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2126currently under development at the State University of New York at
2127Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2128continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2129
2130Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2131debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2132symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2133
2134There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2135in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2136
2137 * set write on/off
2138
2139GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2140a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2141the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2142by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2143effect immediately.
2144
2145 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2146
2147When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2148shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2149The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2150examining core files.
2151
2152 * set listsize
2153
2154You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2155The default is 10.
2156
2157 * New machines supported (host and target)
2158
2159SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2160Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2161Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2162
2163 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2164
2165IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2166
2167 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2168
2169AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2170AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2171Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2172
2173 * New remote interfaces
2174
2175AMD 29000 Adapt
2176AMD 29000 Minimon
2177
2178
2179*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2180
2181 * New Facilities
2182
2183Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2184
2185Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2186target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2187is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2188remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2189remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2190also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2191using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2192stub on the target system.
2193
2194New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2195
2196GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2197library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2198object file types such as a.out and coff.
2199
2200There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2201refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2202
2203
2204 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2205
2206All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2207by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2208
2209For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2210``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2211Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2212
2213What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2214print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2215will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2216all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2217
2218confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2219 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2220 it is already running. Default is ON.
2221
2222editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2223 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2224 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2225 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2226 Default is ON.
2227
2228history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2229 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2230 or the value of the environment variable
2231 GDBHISTFILE.
2232
2233history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2234 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2235 HISTSIZE.
2236
2237history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2238 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2239 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2240
2241history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2242 history expansion will be performed on
2243 command line input. The default is OFF.
2244
2245radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2246 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2247 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2248
2249height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2250 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2251 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2252 variable TERM.
2253
2254width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2255 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2256 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2257 variable TERM.
2258
2259Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2260``set width'' instead.
2261
2262print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2263 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2264 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2265 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2266
2267print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2268 is OFF.
2269
2270print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2271 "raw" form if off.
2272
2273print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2274 like instructions.
2275
2276print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2277
2278
2279 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2280
2281The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2282new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2283are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2284window.
2285
2286
2287 * Support for Shared Libraries
2288
2289GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2290Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2291before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2292happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2293At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2294from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2295shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2296It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2297
2298sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2299 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2300 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2301
2302info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2303
2304
2305 * Watchpoints
2306
2307A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2308expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2309tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2310quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2311problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2312more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2313
2314watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2315
2316info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2317
2318delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2319disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2320enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2321
2322
2323 * C++ multiple inheritance
2324
2325When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2326for C++ programs.
2327
2328 * C++ exception handling
2329
2330Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2331ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2332the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2333handler's context).
2334
2335catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2336 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2337 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2338
2339info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2340 current stack frame.
2341
2342
2343 * Minor command changes
2344
2345The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2346command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2347is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2348
2349The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2350at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2351frames without printing.
2352
2353 * New directory command
2354
2355'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2356The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2357about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2358with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2359find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2360
2361 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2362
2363For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2364for more details.
2365
2366GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2367two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2368Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2369where the program that you are debugging will run.