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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
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6* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
10
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11* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12now complete on file names.
13
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14* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16For instance, consider:
17
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
20 (gdb) p variable.
21
22If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23completions will be "f1" and "f2".
24
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25* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
26operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
27macros.
28
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29* New remote packets
30
31qSearch:memory:
32 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
33
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34QStartNoAckMode
35 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
36 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
37 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
38
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39qXfer:osdata:read
40 Obtains additional operating system information
41
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42* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
43
44 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
45 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
46 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
47
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48* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
49source+assembly.
50
c055b101 51* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 52DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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53
54* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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55and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
56`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 57
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58* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
59with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
60
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61* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
62
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63* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
64
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65* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
66which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
67
1fddbabb 68* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 69list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 70
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71* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
72conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
73have also been fixed.
74
bfb8797a 75* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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76From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
77are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 78
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79* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
80
81 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
82 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
83
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84 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
85 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
86 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
87
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88 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
89 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
90
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91 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
92 gdbserver.
93
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94* Python scripting
95
96 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
97 available is determined at configure time.
98
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99 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
100
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101* Ada tasking support
102
103 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
104 been introduced:
105
106 info tasks
107 Print the list of Ada tasks.
108 info task N
109 Print detailed information about task number N.
110 task
111 Print the task number of the current task.
112 task N
113 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
114
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115* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
116add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
117
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118* New commands
119
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120find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
121 val1 [, val2, ...]
122 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
123
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124maint set python print-stack
125maint show python print-stack
126 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
127
128python [CODE]
129 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
130
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131set print symbol-loading
132show print symbol-loading
133 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
134
e0a3ce09 135set debug timestamp
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136show debug timestamp
137 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
138
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139set exec-wrapper
140show exec-wrapper
141unset exec-wrapper
142 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 143
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144set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
145show multiple-symbols
146 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
147 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
148 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
149
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150set breakpoint always-inserted
151show breakpoint always-inserted
152 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
153 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
154 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
155
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156set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
157show arm fallback-mode
158set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
159show arm force-mode
160 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
161 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
162 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
163 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
164
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165set disable-randomization
166show disable-randomization
167 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
168 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
169 multiple debugging sessions.
170
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171set target-async
172 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
173 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
174 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
175 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
176
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177set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
178show tcp auto-retry
179set tcp connect-timeout
180show tcp connect-timeout
181 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
182 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
183 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
184
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185macro define
186macro list
187macro undef
188 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
189 interactively.
190
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191info os processes
192 Show operating system information about processes.
193
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194* New native configurations
195
196x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
197
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198x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
199
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200* New targets
201
202x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
203
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204* Removed commands
205
206catch load
207catch unload
208 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
209
75feb17d 210*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 211
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212* New native configurations
213
214NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 215Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
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216
217* New targets
218
219NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 220Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 221
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222* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
223
224 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
225 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
226 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
227 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
228
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229* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
230(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
231
fe6fbf8b 232* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 233is resolved.
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234
235* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
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236including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
237and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 238
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239* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
240accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
241more than one contiguous range of addresses.
242
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243* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
244
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245* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
246registers on PowerPC targets.
247
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248* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
249targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
250
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251* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
252commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
253
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254* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
255extended-remote mode.
256
24a836bd 257* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
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258The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
259error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
260The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 261
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262* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
263building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
264target architectures.
265
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266* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
267Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
268now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
269stored in two consecutive float registers.
270
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271* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
272breakpoints now.
273
b93b6ca7 274* Improved support for debugging Ada
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275Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
276include:
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277 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
278 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
279 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
280 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
281 of an assignment
282 - Improved command completion in Ada
283 - Several bug fixes
284
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285* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
286process.
287
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288* New commands
289
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290set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
291show print frame-arguments
292 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
293 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
294
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295remote put
296remote get
297remote delete
298 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
299
300* New MI commands
301
302-target-file-put
303-target-file-get
304-target-file-delete
305 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
306
307* New remote packets
308
309vFile:open:
310vFile:close:
311vFile:pread:
312vFile:pwrite:
313vFile:unlink:
314 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 315
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316vAttach
317 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
318 mode.
319
320vRun
321 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
322
8d5f9c6f 323*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 324
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325* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
326bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
327Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
328
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329* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
330symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
331-Bsymbolic linker option.
332
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333* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
334recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
335is not supported.
336
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337* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
338frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
339
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340* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
34132-bit or 64-bit register values.
342
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343* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
344
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345* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
346target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
347a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
348
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349* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
350automatically displayed as character or string data.
351
352* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
353arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
354as strings.
e1f48ead 355
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356* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
357for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 358only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 359
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360* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
361iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 362
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363* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
364ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
365has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
366
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367* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
368
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369* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
370
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371* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
372layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
373segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
374
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375* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
376immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
377
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378* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
379"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
380packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
381where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
382Windows and SymbianOS).
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383
384* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
385(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
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386
387* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
388according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 389
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390* New commands
391
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392set remoteflow
393show remoteflow
394 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
395 when debugging using remote targets.
396
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397set mem inaccessible-by-default
398show mem inaccessible-by-default
399 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
400 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
401 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
402 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
403 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
404
405set breakpoint auto-hw
406show breakpoint auto-hw
407 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
408 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
409 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
410 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
411 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
412 including "next" and "finish".
413
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414catch exception
415catch exception unhandled
416 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
417
418catch assert
419 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
420
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421set sysroot
422show sysroot
423 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
424 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
425 an alias to "set sysroot".
426
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427info spu
428 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
429 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
430 architecture.
431
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432* New native configurations
433
434OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
435
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436set tdesc filename
437unset tdesc filename
438show tdesc filename
439 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
440 not query the target for its built-in description.
441
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442* New targets
443
54fe9172 444OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 445MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 446Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 447
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448* New remote packets
449
450QPassSignals:
451 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
452 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
453
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454qXfer:features:read:
455 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
456 features.
6dd09645 457
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458qXfer:spu:read:
459qXfer:spu:write:
460 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
461 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
462
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463qXfer:libraries:read:
464 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
465 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
466 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
467 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
468
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469* Removed targets
470
471Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
472
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473alpha*-*-osf1*
474alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 475d10v-*-*
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476hppa*-*-hiux*
477i[34567]86-ncr-*
478i[34567]86-*-dgux*
479i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
480i[34567]86-*-netware*
481i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
482i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
483i[34567]86-*-sco*
484i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
485i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
486i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
487i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
488i[34567]86-*-unixware*
489i[34567]86-*-sysv*
490i[34567]86-*-isc*
491m68*-cisco*-*
492m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 493mips*-*-pe
483367ee 494rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 495sh*-*-pe
483367ee 496
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497* Other removed features
498
499target abug
500target cpu32bug
501target est
502target rom68k
503
504 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
505
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506target hms
507target e7000
508target sh3
509target sh3e
510
511 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
512 H8/300.
513
514target ocd
515
516 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
517 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
518 interfaces.
519
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520DWARF 1 support
521
522 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
523 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
524
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525Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
526
527 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
528 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
529 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
530 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
531
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532MIPS ".pdr" sections
533
534 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
535 in debugging information.
536
537Scheme support
538
539 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
540 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
541
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542set mips stack-arg-size
543set mips saved-gpreg-size
544
545 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
546
6dd09645 547*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 548
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549* New targets
550
551Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 552Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 553
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554* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
555(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
556running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
557
558* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
559Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
560supported.
561
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562* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
563broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
564
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565* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
566stub provides the required support.
567
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568* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
569longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
570
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571* New commands
572
573set substitute-path
574unset substitute-path
575show substitute-path
576 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
577 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
578 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
579 between compilation and debugging.
580
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581set trace-commands
582show trace-commands
583 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
584 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
585 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
586
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587* REMOVED features
588
589The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
590
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591Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
592an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
593
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594The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
595
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596* New remote packets
597
598qSupported:
599 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
600 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
601 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
602 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
603 target.
604
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605qXfer:auxv:read:
606 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
607 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
608
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609qXfer:memory-map:read:
610 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
611 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
612
613vFlashErase:
614vFlashWrite:
615vFlashDone:
616 Erase and program a flash memory device.
617
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618* Removed remote packets
619
620qPart:auxv:read:
621 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
622 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
623
e374b601 624*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 625
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626* New targets
627
628Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
629
630Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
631
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632* New commands
633
634init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
635 only if it doesn't already have a value.
636
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637The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
638
639checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
640
641restart <n> Return the program state to a
642 previously saved state.
643
644info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
645
646delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
647
648set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
649 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
650
651info forks List forks of the user program that
652 are available to be debugged.
653
654fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
655 forks of the user program that are
656 available to be debugged.
657
658delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
659 that are available to be debugged (and
660 kill the forked process).
661
662detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
663 that are available to be debugged (and
664 allow the process to continue).
665
3950dc3f
NS
666* New architecture
667
668Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
669
0ea3f30e
DJ
670* Improved Windows host support
671
672GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
673native console support, and remote communications using either
674network sockets or serial ports.
675
f79daebb
GM
676* Improved Modula-2 language support
677
678GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
679basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
680pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
681printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
682written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
683GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
684
acab6ab2
MM
685* REMOVED features
686
687The ARM rdi-share module.
688
f4267320
DJ
689The Netware NLM debug server.
690
53e5f3cf 691*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 692
e0ecbda1
MK
693* New native configurations
694
02a677ac 695OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
696OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
697
d64a6579
KB
698* New targets
699
700Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
701
b33a6190
AS
702* New command line options
703
704--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
705--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
706 the child (debugged) program exited with.
707--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
708 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
709 specified multiple times and in conjunction
710 with the --command (-x) option.
711
11dced61
AC
712* Deprecated commands removed
713
714The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
715removed:
716
717 Command Replacement
718 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
719 othernames set arm disassembler
720 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
721 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
722 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
723 regs info registers
724
6fe85783
MK
725* New BSD user-level threads support
726
727It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
728library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
729configurations are:
730
731FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
732FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
733OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
734
735Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
736are not yet supported.
737
5260ca71
MS
738* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
739(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
740
e84ecc99
AC
741* REMOVED configurations and files
742
743VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 744Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 745National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 746
31e35378
JB
747* New "set print array-indexes" command
748
749After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
750when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
751behavior.
752
e85e5c83
MK
753* VAX floating point support
754
755GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
756
d91e9901
AS
757* User-defined command support
758
759In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
760to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
761section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
762
f2cb65ca
MC
763*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
764
f47b1503
AS
765* New command line option
766
767GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
768debugging.
769
f2cb65ca
MC
770* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
771
772GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
773information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
774by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
775proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
776to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 777
d08c0230
AC
778* Internationalization
779
780When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
781internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
782continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
783
117ea3cf
PH
784* Ada
785
786Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
787implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
788into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
789
d08c0230
AC
790* New native configurations
791
792GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
793
794* Remote 'p' packet
795
796GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
797packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
798
799* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
800
801GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
802The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
803features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
804i386 application).
805
806GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
807compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
808continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
809configurations:
810
811hppa-*-hpux
812ia64-*-aix
813mips-*-irix*
814*-*-lynx
815mips-*-linux-gnu
816sds protocol
817xdr protocol
818powerpc bdm protocol
819
820Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
821made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
822
823* OBSOLETE configurations and files
824
825Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
826been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
827configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
828permanently REMOVED.
829
830h8300-*-*
831mcore-*-*
832mn10300-*-*
833ns32k-*-*
834sh64-*-*
835v850-*-*
836
ebb7c577
AC
837*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
838
839* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
840
841When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
842heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
843been fixed.
844
845* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
846
847When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
848fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
849IRIX long double values).
850
851* VAX and "next"
852
853A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
854command. This problem has been fixed.
855
860660cb 856*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 857
0dea2468
AC
858* Fix for ``many threads''
859
860On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
861rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
862error message:
863
864 ptrace: No such process.
865 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
866
867This problem has been fixed.
868
2c07db7a
AC
869* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
870
871Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
872GDB to dump core).
873
c23968a2
JB
874* New ``start'' command.
875
876This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
877
71009278
MK
878* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
879
880Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
881live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
882platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
883
884FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
885FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
886NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
887NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
888NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
889OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
890OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
891OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
892OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
893
3c0b7db2
AC
894* Signal trampoline code overhauled
895
896Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
897These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
898of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
899call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
900signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
901
73cc75f3
AC
902Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
903features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
904include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 905
7243600a
BF
906* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
907
6f606e1c
MK
908* New native configurations
909
97dc871c 910GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 911OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
912OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
913OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 914OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 915NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 916OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 917
a1b461bf
AC
918* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
919
920GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
921The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
922including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
923migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
924compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
925work, was also included.
926
927GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
928module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
929
930h8300-*-*
931mcore-*-*
932mn10300-*-*
933ns32k-*-*
934sh64-*-*
935v850-*-*
936xstormy16-*-*
937
938Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
939made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
940
3c7012f5
AC
941* REMOVED configurations and files
942
943Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
944Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
945Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
946Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
947Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
948AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
949Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
950decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
951riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
952sonymips mips-sony-*
953sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
954
e5fe55f7
AC
955*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
956
957* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
958
959The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
960GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
961command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
962program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
963with GDB".
964
965* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
966
967Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
968libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
969cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
970GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
971shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
972the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
973are created.
974
975Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
976
977* Fixed ISO-C build problems
978
979The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
980non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
981compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
982
983* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
984
985Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
986wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
987
988* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
989
990The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
991permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
992systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
993
994* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
995
996Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
997has been updated to use constant array sizes.
998
999* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1000
1001GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1002its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1003panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1004
1005* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1006
1007When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1008by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1009not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1010
faae5abe 1011*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1012
9175c9a3
MC
1013* Removed --with-mmalloc
1014
1015Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1016conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1017
3cc87ec0
MK
1018* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1019
1020The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1021the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1022and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1023you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1024
f0424ef6
MK
1025* Revised SPARC target
1026
1027The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1028FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1029support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1030from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1031(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1032
59659be2
ILT
1033* New C++ demangler
1034
1035GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1036names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1037with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1038programs.
1039
9e08b29b
DJ
1040* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1041
1042GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1043arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1044encountered these.
1045
8dfe8985
DC
1046* C++ nested types and namespaces
1047
1048GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1049improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1050is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1051Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1052namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1053"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1054frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1055if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1056GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1057
cced5e27
MK
1058* New native configurations
1059
1060NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1061OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1062OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1063OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1064OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1065
b4b4b794
KI
1066* New debugging protocols
1067
1068M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1069
7989c619
AC
1070* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1071
1072The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1073and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1074tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1075
5994185b
AC
1076* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1077
1078Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1079been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1080configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1081permanently REMOVED.
1082
1083Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1084Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1085Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1086Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1087Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1088AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1089Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1090decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1091riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1092sonymips mips-sony-*
1093sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1094
0ddabb4c
AC
1095* REMOVED configurations and files
1096
1097SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1098SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1099Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1100Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1101H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1102HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1103HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1104HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1105PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1106386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1107Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1108 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1109 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1110SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1111SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1112Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1113Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1114
c7f1390e
DJ
1115*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1116
1fe43d45
AC
1117* Objective-C
1118
1119Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1120integrated into GDB.
1121
e6beb428
AC
1122* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1123
1124DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1125information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1126By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1127backtraces.
1128
1129The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1130have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1131DWARF 2 CFI support.
1132
1133* Hosted file I/O.
1134
1135GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1136file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1137remote protocol documentation for details.
1138
1139* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1140
1141All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1142architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1143to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1144ppc32 on ppc64).
1145
1146* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1147
1148GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1149per-thread variables.
1150
1151* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1152
1153GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1154GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1155
1156* Separate debug info.
1157
1158GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1159automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1160of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1161system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1162and optional debug files.
1163
1164* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1165
1166DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1167describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1168debugger.
1169
1170GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1171for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1172
1173* Java
1174
1175A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1176Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1177considered "useable".
1178
85f8f974
DJ
1179* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1180
1181The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1182commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1183kernel.
1184
0fac0b41
DJ
1185* GDB supports logging output to a file
1186
1187There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1188used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1189
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1190* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1191
1192The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1193disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1194command.
1195
e286caf2 1196* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1197
1198The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1199registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1200
d28f9cdf
DJ
1201* Profiling support
1202
1203A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1204be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1205session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1206"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1207data, for more informative profiling results.
1208
da0f9dcd
AC
1209* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1210
1211The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1212option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1213"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1214
1215Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1216removed.
1217
fb9b6b35
JJ
1218Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1219Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1220Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1221 in a subsequent -var-update.
1222
954a4db8
MK
1223* New native configurations.
1224
1225FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1226
6760f9e6
JB
1227* Multi-arched targets.
1228
b4263afa 1229HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1230Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1231
1b831c93
AC
1232* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1233
1234Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1235been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1236configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1237permanently REMOVED.
1238
8b0e5691 1239Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1240Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1241H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1242HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1243HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1244HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1245PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1246Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1247 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1248 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1249Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1250Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1251
5835abe7
NC
1252* REMOVED configurations and files
1253
1254V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1255Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1256IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1257i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1258i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1259i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1260HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1261 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1262 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1263Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1264Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1265Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1266OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1267I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1268
a094c6fb
AC
1269* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1270
1271The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1272the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1273context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1274address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1275The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1276
299ffc64 1277*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1278
46248966
AC
1279* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1280
1281When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1282`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1283in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1284library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1285shared libs like mad''.
1286
b9d14705 1287* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1288
b9d14705
DJ
1289Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1290the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1291arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1292powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1293
e0e9281e
JB
1294* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1295
1296GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1297and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1298they expand.
1299
dd73b9bb
AC
1300The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1301invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1302
1303The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1304macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1305
e0e9281e
JB
1306Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1307information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1308your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1309information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1310
2250ee0c
CV
1311* Multi-arched targets.
1312
6e3ba3b8
JT
1313DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1314DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1315NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1316National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1317Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1318Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1319
cd9bfe15 1320* New targets.
e33ce519 1321
456f8b9d
DB
1322Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1323
e33ce519 1324
da8ca43d
JT
1325* New native configurations
1326
1327Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1328SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1329MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1330UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1331
cd9bfe15
AC
1332* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1333
1334Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1335been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1336configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1337permanently REMOVED.
1338
92eb23c5 1339Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1340OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1341IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1342Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1343Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1344Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1345i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1346i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1347i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1348HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1349 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1350 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1351I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1352
db034ac5
AC
1353* OBSOLETE languages
1354
1355CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1356
cd9bfe15
AC
1357* REMOVED configurations and files
1358
1359AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1360A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1361AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1362AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1363AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1364
1365testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1366
20f01a46
DH
1367* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1368
1369This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1370commands. The default is 1024.
1371
a5941fbf
MK
1372* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1373
1374Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1375
89743e04
MS
1376* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1377
1378These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1379to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1380from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1381
9fb14e79
JB
1382* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1383
1384The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1385including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1386of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1387
2037aebb
AC
1388*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1389
1390* New targets.
1391
1392Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1393
1394* Bug fixes
1395
1396gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1397mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1398Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1399
1400gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1401dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1402Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1403
1404Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1405Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1406By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1407
1408i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1409avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1410By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1411
37057839 1412*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1413
1a703748
MS
1414* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1415
1416This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1417really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1418In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1419target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1420This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1421(notably embedded) targets.
1422
cefd4ef5
MS
1423* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1424
55241689
AC
1425This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1426process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1427GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1428hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1429
352ed7b4
MS
1430* New command line option
1431
1432GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1433
1434* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1435
1436There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1437command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1438a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1439be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1440open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1441issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1442a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1443it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1444GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1445is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1446
fe419ffc
RE
1447* Changes in ARM configurations.
1448
1449Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1450configuration is fully multi-arch.
1451
eb7cedd9
MK
1452* New native configurations
1453
fe419ffc 1454ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1455x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1456AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1457Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1458
c9f63e6b
CV
1459* New targets
1460
1461Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1462
9b4ff276
AC
1463* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1464
1465Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1466been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1467configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1468permanently REMOVED.
1469
1470AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1471A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1472AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1473AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1474AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1475
b4ceaee6 1476testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1477
e2caac18
AC
1478* REMOVED configurations and files
1479
1480TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1481WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1482PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1483PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1484PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1485Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1486Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1487 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1488SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1489Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1490Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1491ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1492Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1493
c2a727fa
TT
1494* Changes to command line processing
1495
1496The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1497for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1498
467d8519
TT
1499* Changes to key bindings
1500
1501There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1502
7072a954
AC
1503*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1504
1505Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1506
1507Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1508corrupted.
1509
1510Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1511
1512Numerous documentation fixes.
1513
1514Numerous testsuite fixes.
1515
34f47bc4 1516*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1517
1518* New native configurations
1519
1520Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1521x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1522MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1523MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1524ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1525s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1526
bf64bfd6
AC
1527* New targets
1528
def90278 1529Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1530CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1531UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1532
17e78a56 1533* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1534
1535x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1536Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1537Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1538 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1539TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1540WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1541Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1542PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1543PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1544PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1545SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1546Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1547ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1548Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1549
17e78a56
AC
1550stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1551kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1552
7fcca85b
AC
1553Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1554been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1555configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1556permanently REMOVED.
1557
a196c81c 1558* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1559
1560Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1561Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1562Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1563ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1564Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1565ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1566
6d6b80e5 1567* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1568
6d6b80e5 1569GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1570sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1571present.
1572
bf64bfd6
AC
1573* Other news:
1574
e23194cb
EZ
1575* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1576
1577* The MI enabled by default.
1578
1579The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1580revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1581engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1582using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1583which is now deprecated.
1584
1585* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1586
1587GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1588main features are supported:
1589
1590 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1591
1592 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1593 extension;
1594
1595 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1596
1597 - a Pascal expression parser.
1598
1599However, some important features are not yet supported.
1600
1601 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1602
1603 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1604
1605 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1606 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1607
1608 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1609
1610 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1611
1612* Changes in completion.
1613
1614Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1615to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1616users expect at the shell prompt.
1617
1618Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1619`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1620program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1621files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1622be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1623considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1624name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1625
1626`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1627
1628* New platform-independent commands:
1629
1630It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1631hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1632documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1633
1634* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1635
d7275149
MK
1636Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1637revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1638many threads as your system allows you to have.
1639
e23194cb
EZ
1640Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1641
d7275149
MK
1642Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1643multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1644
1645* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1646
1647Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1648
e23194cb
EZ
1649GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1650debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1651supported.)
1652
1653* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1654
1655Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1656breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1657implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1658put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1659and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1660registers.
1661
1662The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1663debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1664watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1665
1666* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1667
1668New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1669the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1670
1671New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1672display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1673IDT.
1674
1675New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1676from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1677New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1678a given linear address.
1679
1680GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1681program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1682which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1683
1684DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1685
6c56c069
EZ
1686It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1687
e23194cb
EZ
1688* Changes in documentation.
1689
1690All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1691Documentation License.
1692
1693Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1694manual.
1695
1696TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1697
1698Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1699manual.
1700
1701The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1702documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1703hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1704
5d6640b1
AC
1705* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1706
1707The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1708``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1709contents of this file.
1710
1a1d8446
AC
1711* gdba.el deleted
1712
1713GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1714
9debab2f 1715*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1716
c63ce875
EZ
1717* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1718
1719Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1720programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1721displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1722greater level of detail.
1723
1724* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1725
1726It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1727bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1728on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1729written.
1730
1731* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1732
1733The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1734necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1735machines ``out of the box''.
1736
1737The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1738possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1739signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1740would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1741interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1742
1743It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1744standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1745even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1746and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1747terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1748
1749The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1750enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1751also works.
1752
1753DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1754GDB.
1755
1756It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1757directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1758times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1759breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1760
ed9a39eb
JM
1761* New native configurations
1762
1763ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1764PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1765
7a292a7a
SS
1766* New targets
1767
96baa820 1768Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1769x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1770PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1771TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1772
085dd6e6
JM
1773* OBSOLETE configurations
1774
1775Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1776Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1777Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1778ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1779Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1780
9debab2f
AC
1781Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1782but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1783these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1784be permanently REMOVED.
1785
5330533d
SS
1786* Gould support removed
1787
1788Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1789
bc9e5bbf
AC
1790* New features for SVR4
1791
1792On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1793without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1794load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1795
1796* Many C++ enhancements
1797
1798C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1799in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1800
adf40b2e
JM
1801* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1802
1803A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1804sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1805with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1806``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1807
1808 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1809 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1810
43e526b9
JM
1811* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1812
1813A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1814expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1815instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1816
1817The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1818added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1819
96baa820
JM
1820* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1821
1822The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1823``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1824include ``set remote P-packet''.
1825
11cf8741
JM
1826* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1827
1828The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1829accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1830``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1831
7876dd43
DB
1832* ``apropos'' command added.
1833
1834The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1835documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1836try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1837
bc9e5bbf
AC
1838* New MI interface
1839
1840A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1841interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1842process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1843"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1844enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1845
1846 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1847
c906108c
SS
1848*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1849
1850* New native configurations
1851
1852HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1853HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1854M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1855
1856* New targets
1857
1858Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1859Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1860Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1861
1862* OBSOLETE configurations
1863
1864Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1865
1866Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1867but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1868these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1869be permanently REMOVED.
1870
1871* ANSI/ISO C
1872
1873As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1874buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1875containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1876use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1877available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1878configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1879information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1880already.
1881
1882* Readline 2.2
1883
1884GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1885
1886* set extension-language
1887
1888You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1889languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1890you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1891 set extension-language .c c++
1892The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1893and their associated languages.
1894
1895* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1896
1897When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1898you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1899PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1900
1901 set processor NAME
1902
1903sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1904following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1905
1906 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1907 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1908 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1909 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1910 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1911 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1912 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1913 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1914 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1915 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1916 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1917
1918At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1919special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1920registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1921only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1922
1923* HP-UX support
1924
1925Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1926more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1927library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1928support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1929for xdb and dbx commands.
1930
1931* Catchpoints
1932
1933HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1934generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1935to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1936
1937This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1938argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1939output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1940
1941* Debugging across forks
1942
1943On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1944in the inferior.
1945
1946* TUI
1947
1948HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1949it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1950configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1951
1952* GDB remote protocol additions
1953
1954A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1955Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1956fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1957allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1958
1959For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1960full 64-bit address. The command
1961
1962 set remoteaddresssize 32
1963
1964can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1965the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1966will be discarded.
1967
1968In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1969command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1970
1971 maint packet heythere
1972
1973sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1974disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1975time.
1976
1977The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1978target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1979downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1980
1981* Tracing can collect general expressions
1982
1983You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1984further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1985doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1986
1987* mask-address variable for Mips
1988
1989For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1990a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1991of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1992
1993* Higher serial baud rates
1994
1995GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1996230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1997to achieve all of these rates.)
1998
1999* i960 simulator
2000
2001The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2002builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2003
2004
2005*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2006
2007* New native configurations
2008
2009Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2010Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2011Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2012PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2013PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2014Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2015Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2016
2017* New targets
2018
2019Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2020Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2021Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2022Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2023MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2024MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2025MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2026Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2027Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2028Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2029NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2030
2031* New debugging protocols
2032
2033ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2034M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2035DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2036PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2037PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2038Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2039
2040* DWARF 2
2041
2042All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2043format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2044information.
2045
2046* Java frontend
2047
2048GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2049only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2050
2051* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2052
2053For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2054loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2055locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2056
2057* Live range splitting
2058
2059GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2060range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2061more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2062
2063* Hurd support
2064
2065GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2066updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2067
2068* ARM Thumb support
2069
2070GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2071instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2072instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2073accordingly.
2074
2075* MIPS16 support
2076
2077GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2078instruction set.
2079
2080* Overlay support
2081
2082GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2083linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2084will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2085control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2086additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2087in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2088
2089* info symbol
2090
2091The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2092the symbol at the specified address.
2093
2094* Trace support
2095
2096The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2097asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2098extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2099includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2100file tracepoint.c for more details.
2101
2102* MIPS simulator
2103
2104Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2105by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2106of most MIPS variants.
2107
2108* Sparc simulator
2109
2110Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2111by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2112Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2113
2114* set architecture
2115
2116For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2117basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2118architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2119the possible architectures.
2120
2121*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2122
2123* New native configurations
2124
2125Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2126M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2127PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2128PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2129PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2130RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2131
2132* New targets
2133
2134ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2135I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2136MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2137MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2138PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2139Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2140Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2141
2142* PowerPC simulator
2143
2144The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2145contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2146PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2147basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2148performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2149
2150* Solaris 2.5
2151
2152GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2153
2154* Windows 95/NT native
2155
2156GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2157To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2158which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2159Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2160ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2161
2162* dont-repeat command
2163
2164If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2165command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2166useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2167extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2168
2169* Send break instead of ^C
2170
2171The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2172rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2173GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2174
2175* Remote protocol timeout
2176
2177The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2178that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2179to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2180
2181* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2182
2183By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2184loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2185stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2186when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2187in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2188
2189Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2190/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2191automatically on hpux10.
2192
2193* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2194
2195Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2196
2197* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2198
2199When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2200may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2201the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2202every character. The default value is 1050.
2203
2204* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2205
2206If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2207a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2208replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2209details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2210remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2211to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2212
2213* Speedups for remote debugging
2214
2215GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2216the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2217and more efficient S-record downloading.
2218
2219* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2220
2221GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2222Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2223
2224*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2225
2226* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2227
2228The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2229can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2230
2231* Remote targets use caching
2232
2233Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2234remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2235it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2236debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2237off' turns the the data cache off.
2238
2239* Remote targets may have threads
2240
2241The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2242in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2243gdb/remote.c for details.
2244
2245* NetROM support
2246
2247If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2248support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2249acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2250write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2251support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2252another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2253sequence is something like
2254
2255 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2256 load <prog>
2257 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2258
2259* Macintosh host
2260
2261GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2262may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2263it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2264available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2265device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2266directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2267scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2268mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2269
2270* Autoconf
2271
2272GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2273but does simplify configuration and building.
2274
2275* hpux10
2276
2277GDB now supports hpux10.
2278
2279*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2280
2281* New native configurations
2282
2283x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2284x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2285NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2286Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2287
2288* New targets
2289
2290A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2291HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2292CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2293PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2294WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2295
2296* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2297
2298GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2299possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2300filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2301the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2302if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2303
2304* Arguments to user-defined commands
2305
2306User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2307Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2308trivial example:
2309define adder
2310 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2311
2312To execute the command use:
2313adder 1 2 3
2314
2315Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2316Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2317use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2318
2319* New `if' and `while' commands
2320
2321This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2322commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2323expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2324execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2325terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2326`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2327if the expression is zero.
2328
2329* Fortran source language mode
2330
2331GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2332Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2333variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2334with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2335Fortran compilers.
2336
2337* Better HPUX support
2338
2339Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2340running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2341processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2342for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2343that behavior do the following before running the program:
2344
2345 adb -w a.out
2346 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2347 control-d
2348
2349This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2350To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2351
2352 adb -w a.out
2353 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2354 control-d
2355
2356You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2357the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2358external linkage.
2359
2360GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2361HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2362
2363* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2364
2365You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2366commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2367current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2368"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2369associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2370configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2371
2372* New DOS host serial code
2373
2374This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2375no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2376a PC's serial port.
2377
2378*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2379
2380* New "complete" command
2381
2382This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2383were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2384
2385* Trailing space optional in prompt
2386
2387"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2388allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2389
2390* Breakpoint hit counts
2391
2392"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2393has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2394can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2395to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2396less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2397that breakpoint.
2398
2399* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2400
2401"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2402an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2403arrays actually contain only short strings.
2404
2405* Shared library breakpoints
2406
2407In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2408breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2409
2410* Hardware watchpoints
2411
2412There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2413targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2414
55241689 2415Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2416
2417* Annotations
2418
2419Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2420and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2421
2422* Improved Irix 5 support
2423
2424GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2425
2426* Improved HPPA support
2427
2428GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2429
2430* New native configurations
2431
2432Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2433HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2434Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2435RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2436
2437* New targets
2438
2439OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2440MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2441Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2442
2443* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2444
2445There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2446This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2447
2448* Fixes
2449
2450As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2451and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2452
2453*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2454
2455* Irix 5 is now supported
2456
2457* HPPA support
2458
2459GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2460to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2461GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2462of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2463can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2464
2465
2466*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2467
2468* User visible changes:
2469
2470* Remote Debugging
2471
2472The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2473target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2474debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2475integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2476debugging info for the mips target).
2477
2478* DEC Alpha native support
2479
2480GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2481debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2482work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2483Alpha-specific notes.
2484
2485* Preliminary thread implementation
2486
2487GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2488
2489* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2490
2491This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2492to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2493for details).
2494
2495* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2496
2497This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2498mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2499call methods, ...etc.
2500
2501*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2502
2503 * User visible changes:
2504
2505Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2506supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2507other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2508somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2509
2510Filename completion now works.
2511
2512When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2513arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2514addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2515
2516All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2517vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2518should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2519your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2520to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2521
2522 * DEC alpha support
2523
2524This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2525cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2526
2527
2528*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2529
2530 * Testsuite
2531
2532This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2533The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2534via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2535
2536 * C++ demangling
2537
2538'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2539emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2540Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2541disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2542use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2543
2544 * Simulators
2545
2546GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2547So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2548Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2549
2550 * New targets supported
2551
2552H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2553H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2554SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2555Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2556IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2557
2558Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2559version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2560GO32 memory extender.
2561
2562 * New remote protocols
2563
2564MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2565
2566 * New source languages supported
2567
2568This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2569used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2570into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2571
2572
2573*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2574
2575 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2576
2577GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2578version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2579University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2580compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2581format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2582(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2583
2584Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2585
2586 * Faster and better demangling
2587
2588We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2589demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2590character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2591only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2592This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2593increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2594symbol lookups.
2595
2596`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2597from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2598compiler does not actually implement.
2599
2600 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2601
2602In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2603inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2604recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2605very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2606The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2607circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2608fix.
2609
2610The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2611release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2612
2613 * Improved configure script
2614
2615The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2616you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2617host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2618done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2619
2620We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2621version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2622`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2623The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2624only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2625We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2626
2627 * Documentation improvements
2628
2629There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2630produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2631before submitting changes.
2632
2633The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2634M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2635`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2636you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2637a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2638
2639*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2640We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2641been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2642or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2643`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2644around this problem.
2645
2646 * New features
2647
2648GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2649the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2650`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2651the target program.
2652
2653The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2654how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2655
2656 * New native hosts supported
2657
2658HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2659386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2660
2661 * New targets supported
2662
2663AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2664
2665 * New file formats supported
2666
2667BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2668HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2669
2670 * Major bug fixes
2671
2672Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2673
2674We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2675printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2676
2677We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2678for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2679release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2680
2681You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2682will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2683
2684We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2685for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2686especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2687libraries.
2688
2689The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2690information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2691command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2692any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2693when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2694
2695 * Internal improvements
2696
2697GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2698debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2699
2700GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2701Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2702symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2703contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2704shared code that handles any of them.
2705
2706 * New command line options
2707
2708We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2709
2710 * Mmalloc licensing
2711
2712The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2713General Public License.
2714
2715*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2716
2717 * Host/native/target split
2718
2719GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2720hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2721target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2722local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2723ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2724
2725The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2726GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2727is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2728code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2729any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2730built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2731handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2732
2733GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2734It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2735plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2736
2737 * New hosts supported
2738
2739HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2740386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2741386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2742
2743 * New targets supported
2744
2745Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
274668030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2747
2748 * New native hosts supported
2749
2750386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2751 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2752386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2753
2754 * New file formats supported
2755
2756BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2757supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2758format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2759
2760 * New commands
2761
2762`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2763`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2764These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2765
2766`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2767
2768You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2769scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2770prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2771executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2772
2773 * C++ improvements
2774
2775We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2776info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2777symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2778
2779Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2780
2781 * Major bug fixes
2782
2783The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2784fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2785by the compiler.
2786
2787We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2788support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2789
2790John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2791slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2792that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2793purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2794the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2795mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2796
2797Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2798about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2799completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2800we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2801
2802 * AMD 29k support
2803
2804A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2805specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2806calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2807usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2808in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2809
2810We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2811Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2812of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2813resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2814
2815 * Remote interfaces
2816
2817We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2818with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2819message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2820This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2821needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2822breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2823each instruction being stepped through.
2824
2825The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2826registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2827
2828There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2829find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2830Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2831processor with a serial port.
2832
2833 * Configuration
2834
2835Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2836`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2837supported, and what files each one uses.
2838
2839 * Library changes
2840
2841There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2842disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2843Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2844disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2845
2846The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2847Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2848can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2849grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2850
2851 * Documentation
2852
2853The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2854reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2855as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2856encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2857system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2858bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2859
2860And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2861
2862
2863*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2864
2865 * Better support for C++ function names
2866
2867GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2868names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2869(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2870single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2871Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2872
2873GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2874the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2875You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2876lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2877for the list of formats.
2878
2879 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2880
2881Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2882C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2883directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2884can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2885usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2886about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2887this problem.)
2888
2889 * New 'maintenance' command
2890
2891All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2892the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2893can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2894
2895 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2896 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2897 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2898 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2899 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2900 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2901
2902The following commands are new:
2903
2904 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2905 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2906 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2907
2908 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2909
2910We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2911(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2912be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2913read after argv processing.
2914
2915 * New hosts supported
2916
2917Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2918
55241689 2919GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2920
2921We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2922is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2923for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2924masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2925fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2926It costs extra.
2927
2928 * New targets supported
2929
2930Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2931
2932 * More smarts about finding #include files
2933
2934GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2935all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2936greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2937especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2938the one that contains your sources.
2939
2940We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2941breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2942try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2943
2944 * Interesting infernals change
2945
2946GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2947section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2948target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2949stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2950
2951 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2952
2953There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2954 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2955 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2956
2957See the ChangeLog for details.
2958
2959*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2960
2961 * New machines supported (host and target)
2962
2963IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2964
2965SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2966
2967 * New malloc package
2968
2969GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2970Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2971capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2972This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2973pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2974more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2975
2976 * info proc
2977
2978The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2979'help info proc' for details.
2980
2981 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2982
2983The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2984Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2985possible.
2986
2987 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2988
2989Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2990support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2991conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2992environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2993that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2994in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2995
2996 * Cross byte order fixes
2997
2998Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2999targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3000
3001 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3002
3003If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3004system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3005`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3006program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3007called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3008Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3009and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3010the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3011option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3012starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3013
3014You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3015the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3016information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3017slower, but makes future operations faster.
3018
3019The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3020build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3021A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3022use is:
3023
3024 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3025
3026The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3027It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3028shared across multiple host platforms.
3029
3030 * longjmp() handling
3031
3032GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3033siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3034all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3035platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3036
3037 * Solaris 2.0
3038
3039Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3040this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3041reading symbols.
3042
3043 * Bug fixes
3044
3045As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3046People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3047crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3048
3049*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3050
3051 * New machines supported (host and target)
3052
3053SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3054 (except core files)
3055BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3056Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3057
3058 * New machines supported (target)
3059
3060AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3061
3062 * C++ support
3063
3064GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3065The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3066per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3067
3068GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3069`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3070extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3071good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3072will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3073released.
3074
3075 * New features for SVR4
3076
3077GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3078shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3079only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3080
3081The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3082on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3083it prints the address mappings of the process.
3084
3085If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3086bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3087
3088 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3089
3090Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3091now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3092skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3093make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3094same code linked statically.
3095
3096 * New Getopt
3097
3098GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3099version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3100continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3101Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3102added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3103future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3104
3105 * Bugs fixed
3106
3107The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3108Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3109See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3110
3111
3112*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3113
3114 * New machines supported (host and target)
3115
3116Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3117NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3118Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3119
3120 * Almost SCO Unix support
3121
3122We had hoped to support:
3123SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3124(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3125that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3126about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3127
3128 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3129
3130GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3131debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3132is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3133send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3134reqired (if any).
3135
3136 * New Readline
3137
3138GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3139is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3140required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3141
3142 * Bugs fixed
3143
3144The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3145Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3146See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3147
3148 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3149
3150GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3151supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3152symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3153
3154Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3155mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3156debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3157mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3158version 2.
3159
3160Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3161really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3162line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3163variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3164situation somewhat.
3165
3166When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3167However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3168methods.
3169
3170We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3171DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3172encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3173
3174
3175*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3176
3177 * Improved configuration
3178
3179Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3180Porting BFD is simpler.
3181
3182 * Stepping improved
3183
3184The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3185of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3186in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3187function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3188
3189 * Bug fixing
3190
3191Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3192
3193 * New host supported (not target)
3194
3195Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3196
3197
3198*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3199
3200 * Multiple source language support
3201
3202GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3203It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3204and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3205language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3206You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3207`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3208
3209 * GDB and Modula-2
3210
3211GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3212currently under development at the State University of New York at
3213Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3214continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3215
3216Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3217debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3218symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3219
3220There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3221in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3222
3223 * set write on/off
3224
3225GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3226a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3227the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3228by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3229effect immediately.
3230
3231 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3232
3233When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3234shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3235The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3236examining core files.
3237
3238 * set listsize
3239
3240You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3241The default is 10.
3242
3243 * New machines supported (host and target)
3244
3245SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3246Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3247Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3248
3249 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3250
3251IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3252
3253 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3254
3255AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3256AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3257Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3258
3259 * New remote interfaces
3260
3261AMD 29000 Adapt
3262AMD 29000 Minimon
3263
3264
3265*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3266
3267 * New Facilities
3268
3269Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3270
3271Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3272target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3273is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3274remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3275remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3276also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3277using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3278stub on the target system.
3279
3280New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3281
3282GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3283library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3284object file types such as a.out and coff.
3285
3286There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3287refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3288
3289
3290 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3291
3292All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3293by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3294
3295For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3296``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3297Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3298
3299What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3300print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3301will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3302all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3303
3304confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3305 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3306 it is already running. Default is ON.
3307
3308editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3309 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3310 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3311 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3312 Default is ON.
3313
3314history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3315 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3316 or the value of the environment variable
3317 GDBHISTFILE.
3318
3319history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3320 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3321 HISTSIZE.
3322
3323history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3324 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3325 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3326
3327history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3328 history expansion will be performed on
3329 command line input. The default is OFF.
3330
3331radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3332 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3333 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3334
3335height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3336 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3337 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3338 variable TERM.
3339
3340width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3341 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3342 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3343 variable TERM.
3344
3345Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3346``set width'' instead.
3347
3348print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3349 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3350 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3351 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3352
3353print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3354 is OFF.
3355
3356print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3357 "raw" form if off.
3358
3359print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3360 like instructions.
3361
3362print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3363
3364
3365 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3366
3367The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3368new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3369are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3370window.
3371
3372
3373 * Support for Shared Libraries
3374
3375GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3376Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3377before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3378happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3379At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3380from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3381shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3382It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3383
3384sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3385 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3386 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3387
3388info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3389
3390
3391 * Watchpoints
3392
3393A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3394expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3395tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3396quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3397problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3398more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3399
3400watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3401
3402info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3403
3404delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3405disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3406enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3407
3408
3409 * C++ multiple inheritance
3410
3411When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3412for C++ programs.
3413
3414 * C++ exception handling
3415
3416Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3417ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3418the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3419handler's context).
3420
3421catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3422 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3423 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3424
3425info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3426 current stack frame.
3427
3428
3429 * Minor command changes
3430
3431The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3432command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3433is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3434
3435The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3436at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3437frames without printing.
3438
3439 * New directory command
3440
3441'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3442The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3443about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3444with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3445find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3446
3447 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3448
3449For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3450for more details.
3451
3452GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3453two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3454Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3455where the program that you are debugging will run.