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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
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6* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
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9* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
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17* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
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19* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
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21* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
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35* Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38
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39* New targets
40
41Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
42Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 43Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 44
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45* Removed native configurations
46
47Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
48been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
49
50arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
51i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
53i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
54m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
55sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57
bd712aed 58* New commands:
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59catch rethrow
60 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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61maint check-psymtabs
62 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
63maint check-symtabs
64 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
65maint expand-symtabs
66 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 67
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68show configuration
69 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
70
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71maint set|show per-command
72maint set|show per-command space
73maint set|show per-command time
74maint set|show per-command symtab
75 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
76
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77* New options
78
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79set debug symfile off|on
80show debug symfile
81 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
82 symbol tables within those files
83
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84set print raw frame-arguments
85show print raw frame-arguments
86 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
87 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
88
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89set remote trace-status-packet
90show remote trace-status-packet
91 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
92
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93set debug nios2
94show debug nios2
95 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
96
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97set range-stepping
98show range-stepping
99 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
100
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101* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
102 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
103 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
104 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
105 "set height 0".
106
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107* New command-line options
108--configuration
109 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
110
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111* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
112 buffer in Common Trace Format.
113
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114* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
115 GDB command gcore.
116
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117* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
118
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119* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
120 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
121
122* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
123 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
124
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125* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
126 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
127 due to an uncaught signal.
128
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129* MI changes
130
131 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
132 Trace Format now.
133
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134 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
135
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136 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
137 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
138 are displayed.
139
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140 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
141 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
142
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143 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
144 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
145 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
146
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147 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
148 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
149 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
150 main subprogram.
151
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152* New system-wide configuration scripts
153 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
154 configuration scripts for the following systems:
155 ** ElinOS
156 ** Wind River Linux
157
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158* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
159 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
160 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
161 below.
162
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163* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
164 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
165
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166* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
167 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
168 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
169
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170* New remote packets
171
172vCont;r
173
174 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
175 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
176 involvemement at each single-step.
177
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178qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
179 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
180 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
181 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
182 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
183 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
184 speedup.
185
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186* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
187
188 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
189 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
190
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191 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
192 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
193 trace state variables.
194
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195 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
196 target.
197
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198* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
199 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
200
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201* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
202
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203* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
204 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
205 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
206 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
207
2d450646 208*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 209
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210* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
211 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
212 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
213 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
214
215set|show record full insn-number-max
216set|show record full stop-at-limit
217set|show record full memory-query
218
219* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
220 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
221 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
222 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
223 This new recording method can be enabled using:
224
225record btrace
226
227 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
228 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
229
230* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
231 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
232 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
233
234record instruction-history prints the execution history at
235 instruction granularity
236
237record function-call-history prints the execution history at
238 function granularity
239
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240* New native configurations
241
51d66578 242ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 243FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 244x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 245Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 246
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247* New targets
248
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249ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
250ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 251Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 252x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 253Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 254
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255* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
256 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
257 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
258 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
259 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
260 --data-directory command-line option.
261
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262* New command line options:
263
264-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
265 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
266
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267* Removed command line options
268
269-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
270 Emacs.
271
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272* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
273 type formatting.
274
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275* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
276
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277* Python scripting
278
279 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
280
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281 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
282
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283 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
284
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285 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
286
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287 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
288 of architecture in the Python API.
289
290 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
291 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
292
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293* New Python-based convenience functions:
294
295 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
296 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
297 ** $_strlen(str)
298 ** $_regex(str, regex)
299
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300* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
301 given an argument.
302
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303* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
304 default for GCC since November 2000.
305
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306* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
307
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308* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
309 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
310
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311* New configure options
312
313--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
314 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
315 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
316 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
317 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
318 options allow the user to override that default.
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319--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
320 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
321 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 322
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323* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
324
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325catch signal
326 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
327 conditions to be attached.
328
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329maint info bfds
330 List the BFDs known to GDB.
331
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332python-interactive [command]
333pi [command]
334 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
335 and print the result of expressions.
336
337py [command]
338 "py" is a new alias for "python".
339
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340enable type-printer [name]...
341disable type-printer [name]...
342 Enable or disable type printers.
343
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344* Removed commands
345
346 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
347 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
348 instead.
349
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350* New options
351
352set print type methods (on|off)
353show print type methods
354 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
355 The default is to show them.
356
357set print type typedefs (on|off)
358show print type typedefs
359 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
360 The default is to show them.
361
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362set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
363show filename-display
364 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
365 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
366
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367set trace-buffer-size
368show trace-buffer-size
369 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
370
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371set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
372show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
373 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
374
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375set debug aarch64
376show debug aarch64
377 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
378 The default is off.
379
380set debug coff-pe-read
381show debug coff-pe-read
382 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
383 exported symbols.
384
385set debug mach-o
386show debug mach-o
387 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
388 processing.
389
390set debug notification
391show debug notification
392 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
393
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394* MI changes
395
396 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
397 "=cmd-param-changed".
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398 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
399 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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400 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
401 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
402 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
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403 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
404 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
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405 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
406 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 407 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 408 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
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409 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
410 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
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411 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
412 library load/unload events.
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413 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
414 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
415 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
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416 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
417 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
418 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
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419 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
420 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 421
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422* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
423 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
424 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
425 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
426
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427* New remote packets
428
429QTBuffer:size
430 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
431 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
432
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433Qbtrace:bts
434 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
435 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
436 qSupported query.
437
438Qbtrace:off
439 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
440 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
441
442qXfer:btrace:read
443 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
444 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
445
80c8d323 446*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 447
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448* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
449 for more x32 ABI info.
450
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451* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
452
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453* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
454
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455* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
456 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
457 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
458 "info os files" lists file descriptors
459 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
460 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
461 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
462 "info os msg" lists message queues
463 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
464
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465* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
466 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
467 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
468 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
469 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
470 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
471
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472* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
473 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
474 record/replay support.
475
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476* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
477
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478* Python scripting
479
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480 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
481 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
482
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483 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
484
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485 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
486 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
487
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488 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
489
490 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
491 the source at which the symbol was defined.
492
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493 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
494 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
495 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
496 symbol's value.
497
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498 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
499 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
500
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501 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
502 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
503 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
504
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505 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
506 object associated with a PC value.
507
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508 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
509 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
510
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511* Go language support.
512 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
513 language.
514
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515* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
516 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
517
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518* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
519 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
520
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521* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
522 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
523 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
524 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
525 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
526 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
527
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528* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
529 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
530 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
531 build/libcpp/expr.c.
532
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533* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
534 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
535
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536* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
537 since December 2007.
538
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539* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
540 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
541 command does. For instance:
542
543 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
544
545 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
546 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
547 created, using the "condition" command.
548
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549* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
550 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
551
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552* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
553
554* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
555 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
556 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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557 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
558 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
559 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
560 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
561 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 562
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563 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
564 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
565 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
566 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
567 the .gdb_index section.
568
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569* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
570
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571* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
572 target.
573
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574* MI changes
575
576 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
577
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578 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
579
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580* New commands
581
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582 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
583 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
584 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
585
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586 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
587 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
588
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589 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
590 several hits.
591
57651221 592 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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593 C++ and Java objects.
594
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595 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
596 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
597 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
598 configured with '--with-python'.
599
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600 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
601 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
602 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
603 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
604 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
605 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
606 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
607
608 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
609 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
610 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
611 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
612
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SS
613 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
614 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
615 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
616 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
617
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TT
618 ** "set print symbol"
619 "show print symbol"
620 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
621 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
622 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
623
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624* Deprecated commands
625
626 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
627 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
628
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KB
629* New targets
630
631Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 632HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 633
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634* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
635 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
636 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
637 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
638 evaluates to true.
639
640* New options
641
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MR
642set mips compression
643show mips compression
644 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
645 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
646 mips16
647 micromips
648 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
649
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650set breakpoint condition-evaluation
651show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 652 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
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653 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
654 available mode.
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655 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
656 target.
657
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658set auto-load off
659 Disable auto-loading globally.
660
661show auto-load
662 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
663
664set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
665show auto-load gdb-scripts
666 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
667
668set auto-load python-scripts on|off
669show auto-load python-scripts
670 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
671
672set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
673show auto-load local-gdbinit
674 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
675
676set auto-load libthread-db on|off
677show auto-load libthread-db
678 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
679
7349ff92 680set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 681show auto-load scripts-directory
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JK
682 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
683 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
684 of the directories listed by this option.
685 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
686
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687set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
688show auto-load safe-path
689 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
690 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
691
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JK
692set debug auto-load on|off
693show debug auto-load
694 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
695
d3ce09f5 696set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 697show dprintf-style
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SS
698 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
699 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
700 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
701 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
702
703set dprintf-function <expr>
704show dprintf-function
705set dprintf-channel <expr>
706show dprintf-channel
707 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
708 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
709
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SS
710set disconnected-dprintf on|off
711show disconnected-dprintf
712 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
713 after GDB disconnects.
714
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JK
715* New configure options
716
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JK
717--with-auto-load-dir
718 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
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JK
719 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
720 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
721 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
722 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 723
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JK
724--with-auto-load-safe-path
725 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 726 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
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JK
727
728--without-auto-load-safe-path
729 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
730 security feature.
731
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LM
732* New remote packets
733
74c48cbb
PA
734z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
735
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LM
736 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
737 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
738 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
739 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
740
9b224c5e
PA
741QProgramSignals:
742
743 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
744 program without GDB involvement.
745
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JK
746* New command line options
747
748--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
749 before loading inferior.
750--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
751 execute it before loading inferior.
752
8837a20f
JB
753*** Changes in GDB 7.4
754
f8eba3c6
TT
755* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
756 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
757 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
758 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
759 inferior changes.
760
1bfeeb0f
JL
761* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
762 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
763
480a3f21
PW
764* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
765 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
766 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
767 target hardware watchpoint.
768
769 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
770 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
771 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
772 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
773
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PM
774* Python scripting
775
32d1c362 776 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 777 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
778 existing one.
779
3a7bf607 780 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
781 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
782 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
783 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
784 now "message", which just prints the error message without
785 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 786
baacfb07 787 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 788 Python API.
713389e0 789
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PM
790 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
791 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 792 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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PM
793 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
794 corresponding value.
795
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PM
796 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
797 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
798 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
799 on GDB start-up.
800
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PM
801 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
802 static_block will return the global and static blocks
803 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
804 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
805
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DE
806 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
807
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KP
808 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
809 "gdb.breakpoints".
810
cc72b2a2
KP
811 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
812 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
813 available in the CLI.
814
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PK
815 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
816 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
817 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
818 "some_type.items()".
819
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KP
820 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
821 new object file.
822
03c3051a
PK
823 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
824 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
825 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
826 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
827 any anonymous fields.
828
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TT
829* MI changes
830
831 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
832 "solib-event".
833
834 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
835 "=breakpoint-modified".
836
837 ** New command -ada-task-info.
838
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DE
839* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
840 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
841 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
842 lives.
843
844 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
845 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
846 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
847 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
848 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
849
850 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
851 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
852
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DE
853* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
854 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
855 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
856 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
857 use this option to specify where to find it.
858
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TJB
859* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
860 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
861 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
862 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
863 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
864 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
865 section in the user manual for more details.
866
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JK
867* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
868 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
869 become available after that.
870
71eba9c2 871* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 872
2bda9cc5
JK
873* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
874 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
875 gcc version 4.7.
876
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DE
877* New commands
878
879!SHELL COMMAND
880 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
881 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
882
9c06b0b4
TJB
883* Changed commands
884
885watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
886 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
887 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
888
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DE
889info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
890 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
891 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
892
71eba9c2 893info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
894 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
895 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
896 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
897 name starts with a hyphen.
898
3065dfb6
SS
899collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
900 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
901 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
902 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
903 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
904 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
905 number of bytes that will be collected.
906
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SS
907tstart [NOTES]
908 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
909 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
910 setting the variable trace-notes.
911
912tstop [NOTES]
913 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
914 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
915 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
916 trace-stop-notes.
917
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KY
918* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
919 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
920 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
921 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
922 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
923 is running.
924
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SS
925* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
926 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
927 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
928
2bda9cc5
JK
929* New options
930
45cfd468
DE
931set debug dwarf2-read
932show debug dwarf2-read
933 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
934 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
935
936set debug symtab-create
937show debug symtab-create
938 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
939 creation. The default is off.
940
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PM
941set extended-prompt
942show extended-prompt
943 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
944 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
945 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
946 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
947 prompt is displayed.
948
2bda9cc5
JK
949set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
950show print entry-values
951 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
952 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
953 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
954
955set debug entry-values
956show debug entry-values
957 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
958 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
959
c011a4f4
DE
960set basenames-may-differ
961show basenames-may-differ
962 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
963 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
964 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
965 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
966 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
967 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
968 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
969 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
970
f196051f
SS
971set trace-user
972show trace-user
973set trace-notes
974show trace-notes
975 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
976 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
977 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
978 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
979
980set trace-stop-notes
981show trace-stop-notes
982 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
983 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
984 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
985 started by someone else.
986
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KY
987* New remote packets
988
989QTEnable
990
991 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
992
993QTDisable
994
995 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
996
f196051f
SS
997QTNotes
998
999 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1000
1001qTP
1002
1003 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1004
405f8e94
SS
1005qTMinFTPILen
1006
1007 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1008 be placed.
1009
1a532630
PP
1010* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1011 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1012
11315641
YQ
1013* New targets
1014
1015Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1016
87326c78
DD
1017* New Simulators
1018
1019Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1020
e8d56f18
JB
1021*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1022
1023* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1024
d6e00af6 1025*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1026
60f98dde
MS
1027* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1028 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1029 matches the given regular expression.
1030
eee5b35e
DD
1031* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1032
b716877b
AB
1033* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1034 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1035
aae1c79a
DE
1036* New command line options
1037
1038-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1039 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1040
a86caf66
DE
1041* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1042 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1043
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DE
1044* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1045 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1046 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1047
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TT
1048* GDB now understands thread names.
1049
1050 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1051 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1052
1053 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1054 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1055
f4b8a18d
KW
1056* OpenCL C
1057 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1058 has been integrated into GDB.
1059
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PM
1060* Python scripting
1061
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PM
1062 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1063 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1064 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1065
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PM
1066 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1067 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1068 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1069 and allows for more dynamic content.
1070
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PM
1071 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1072 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1073 have an is_valid method.
1074
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PM
1075 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1076 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1077 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1078
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DE
1079 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1080
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PM
1081 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1082 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1083 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1084 that function like so:
1085
1086 result = some_value (10,20)
1087
0e3509db
DE
1088 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1089 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1090 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1091
7b51bc51
DE
1092 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1093 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1094 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1095 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1096 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1097
1098 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1099 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1100
99e7ae30
DE
1101 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1102
d8e22779
TT
1103 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1104 selected thread.
1105
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TT
1106 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1107 holds the thread's name.
1108
505500db
SW
1109 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1110 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1111 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1112 The following events are currently supported:
1113 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1114 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1115 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1116
def98928
TT
1117* C++ Improvements:
1118
1119 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1120 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1121
1122 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1123
1124 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1125 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1126 was added to GCC 4.5.
1127
66cb8159
TT
1128 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1129 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1130 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1131 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1132 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1133 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1134
4aac0db7
UW
1135* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1136 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1137 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1138 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1139 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1140
283e6a52
TT
1141* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1142 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1143 execution to a label.
1144
1145* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1146 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1147 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1148 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1149
b56df873 1150* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1151 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1152 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1153 of scope.
1154
ae53ffa4
PA
1155* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1156
1157 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1158 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1159 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1160 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1161 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1162 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1163
1164 (gdb) info threads
1165 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1166
1167 While now you see this:
1168
1169 (gdb) info threads
1170 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1171
1172 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1173 dumps.
1174
1175 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1176 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1177 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1178 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1179
f1310107
TJB
1180* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1181 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1182 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1183 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1184 section in the user manual for more details.
1185
248c9dbc
JB
1186* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1187
1aee7009
JB
1188 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1189 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1190
eb826dc6
MF
1191 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1192
44603653
JB
1193* New native configurations
1194
1195ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1196
91021223
MF
1197* New targets:
1198
1199Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1200
6e1bb179
JB
1201* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1202 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1203 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1204 in the GDB user manual.
1205
50c97f38
TT
1206* Guile support was removed.
1207
448a92bf
MF
1208* New features in the GNU simulator
1209
1210 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1211
66ee2731
MF
1212 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1213
76b8507d 1214*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1215
ba25b921
PA
1216* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1217
1218 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1219 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1220 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1221 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1222 was always disabled for such configurations.
1223
4656f5c6
SW
1224* C++ Improvements:
1225
1226 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1227
1228 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1229 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1230 For example:
1231 namespace A
1232 {
1233 class B { };
1234 void foo (B) { }
1235 }
1236 ...
1237 A::B b
1238 foo(b)
1239 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1240 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1241 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1242
1243 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1244
1245 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1246 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1247 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1248 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1249 entry.
1250 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1251 mentioned flavors of operators.
1252
254e6b9e
DE
1253 ** static const class members
1254
1255 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1256 class definition has been fixed.
1257
711e434b
PM
1258* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1259
1260 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1261 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1262 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1263 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1264 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1265 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1266
0fb4aa4b
PA
1267* Static tracepoints
1268
1269 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1270 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1271 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1272 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1273 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1274 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1275 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1276 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1277 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1278 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1279 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1280 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1281 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1282 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1283 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1284 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1285 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1286 the "New remote packets" section below.
1287
ca11e899
SS
1288* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1289
1290 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1291 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1292 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1293 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1294
1295* Observer mode
1296
1297 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1298 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1299 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1300 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1301 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1302 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1303 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1304
1305* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1306 current thread.
1307
711e434b
PM
1308* New remote packets
1309
1310qGetTIBAddr
1311
1312 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1313
dde08ee1
PA
1314qRelocInsn
1315
1316 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1317 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1318 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1319 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1320 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1321 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1322
0fb4aa4b
PA
1323qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1324
1325 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1326
1327qTSTMat
1328
1329 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1330 program.
1331
1332qXfer:statictrace:read
1333
1334 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1335 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1336 to gdb's qSupported query.
1337
ca11e899
SS
1338QAllow
1339
1340 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1341
1342QTDPsrc
1343
1344 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1345 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1346
3f7b2faa
DE
1347* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1348 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1349 a directory.
1350
d337e9f0
PA
1351* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1352
0fb4aa4b
PA
1353 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1354 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1355 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1356 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1357
1358 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1359 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1360 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1361 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1362 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1363 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1364 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1365
1366 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1367 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1368
c24d0242
PM
1369 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1370
c8d5aac9
L
1371* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1372 it understands register description.
1373
7c953934
TT
1374* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1375
8685c86f
L
1376* X86 general purpose registers
1377
1378 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1379 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1380 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1381 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1382 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1383
95a42b64 1384* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1385 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1386 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1387 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1388 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1389 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1390
8bd10a10
CM
1391* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1392 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1393 in the specified file.
1394
ab38a727
PA
1395* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1396 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1397 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1398 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1399 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1400 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1401 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1402 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1403 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1404 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1405
6149aea9
PA
1406* New commands
1407
f1421989
HZ
1408eval template, expressions...
1409 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1410 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1411
ab38a727
PA
1412set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1413show target-file-system-kind
1414 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1415 names.
1416
6149aea9
PA
1417save breakpoints <filename>
1418 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1419 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1420 definitions, use the `source' command.
1421
1422`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1423is now deprecated.
1424
0fb4aa4b
PA
1425info static-tracepoint-markers
1426 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1427
1428strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1429 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1430 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1431
ca11e899
SS
1432set observer on|off
1433show observer
1434 Enable and disable observer mode.
1435
1436set may-write-registers on|off
1437set may-write-memory on|off
1438set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1439set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1440set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1441set may-interrupt on|off
1442 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1443 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1444 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1445 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1446 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1447 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1448 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1449
1450set record memory-query on|off
1451show record memory-query
1452 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1453 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1454
53a71c06
CR
1455* Changed commands
1456
1457disassemble
1458 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1459
f3e9a817
PM
1460* Python scripting
1461
9279c692
JB
1462** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1463 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1464 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1465 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1466 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1467
adc36818 1468** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1469 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1470 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1471 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1472
fa33c3cd 1473** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1474 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1475
1476** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1477
1478** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1479
967cf477
DE
1480** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1481
8a1ea21f
DE
1482** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1483 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1484 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1485
a7bdde9e
VP
1486* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1487there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1488tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1489regular breakpoints.
1490
05071a4d
PA
1491* New targets
1492
1493ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1494
6aecb9c2
JB
1495* D language support.
1496 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1497 language.
1498
431e49aa
TJB
1499* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1500 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1501 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1502 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1503 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1504
1505* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1506 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1507 conditions of the form:
1508
1509 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1510
1511 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1512 interface mentioned above.
1513
bfbf3774 1514*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1515
4eef138c
TT
1516* C++ Improvements
1517
1518 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1519
1520 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1521 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1522 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1523 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1524 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1525
4eef138c
TT
1526 ** Bug Fixes
1527
1528 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1529 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1530 qualified name.
1531
1532 ** Cast Operators
1533
1534 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1535 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1536
2d1c1221
ME
1537* New targets
1538
1539Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1540Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1541
1542* New Simulators
1543
1544Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1545Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1546
6c95b8df
PA
1547* Multi-program debugging.
1548
1549 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1550 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1551 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1552 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1553 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1554 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1555 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1556 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1557
d5551862
SS
1558* New tracing features
1559
1560 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1561
1562 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1563
1564 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1565 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1566 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1567 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1568 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1569 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1570 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1571 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1572 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1573 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1574
d5551862 1575 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1576
1577 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1578 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1579 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1580 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1581 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1582 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1583 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1584 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1585 the regular trace command.
1586
d5551862
SS
1587 ** Disconnected tracing
1588
1589 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1590 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1591 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1592 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1593 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1594
00bf0b85
SS
1595 ** Trace files
1596
1597 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1598 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1599 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1600 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1601 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1602 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1603 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1604
1605 ** Circular trace buffer
1606
1607 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1608 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1609 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1610 not be available for all target agents.
1611
21a0512e
PP
1612* Changed commands
1613
1614disassemble
1615 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1616 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1617
0fe7935b
DJ
1618info variables
1619 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1620 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1621
fb2e7cb4
JB
1622source
1623 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1624 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1625 support.
1626
1627 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1628 "set script-extension" (see below).
1629
6c95b8df
PA
1630* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1631
399cd161
MS
1632record save [<FILENAME>]
1633 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1634 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1635
1636record restore <FILENAME>
1637 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1638 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1639
6c95b8df
PA
1640add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1641 Add a new inferior.
1642
1643clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1644 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1645 inferior has loaded.
1646
1647remove-inferior ID
1648 Remove an inferior.
1649
1650maint info program-spaces
1651 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1652
9a7071a8
JB
1653set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1654show remote interrupt-sequence
1655 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1656 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1657 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1658 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1659 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1660
1661set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1662show remote interrupt-on-connect
1663 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1664 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1665 Linux kernel.
1666
1667set remotebreak [on | off]
1668show remotebreak
1669Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1670
f61e138d
SS
1671tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1672 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1673
1674info tvariables
1675 List trace state variables and their values.
1676
1677delete tvariable $NAME ...
1678 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1679
6da95a67
SS
1680teval EXPR, ...
1681 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1682 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1683
7a697b8d
SS
1684ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1685 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1686
b0f02ee9
JK
1687* New expression syntax
1688
1689 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1690 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1691
6c95b8df
PA
1692* New options
1693
1694set follow-exec-mode new|same
1695show follow-exec-mode
1696 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1697 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1698 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1699
236f1d4d
SS
1700set default-collect EXPR, ...
1701show default-collect
1702 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1703 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1704 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1705
d5551862
SS
1706set disconnected-tracing
1707show disconnected-tracing
1708 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1709 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1710 upon disconnection.
1711
4daf5ac0
SS
1712set circular-trace-buffer
1713show circular-trace-buffer
1714 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1715 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1716 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1717 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1718
fb2e7cb4
JB
1719set script-extension off|soft|strict
1720show script-extension
1721 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1722 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1723 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1724 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1725 evaluation failed.
1726 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1727
2b71fc8e
JB
1728set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1729show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1730 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1731 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1732 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1733 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1734 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1735 is on.
1736
de2e5182
TT
1737* Python API Improvements
1738
1739 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1740 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1741 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1742
1743 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1744 `is_base_class' attribute.
1745
1746 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1747
1748 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1749 evaluate an expression.
1750
f61e138d
SS
1751* New remote packets
1752
1753QTDV
1754 Define a trace state variable.
1755
1756qTV
1757 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1758
d5551862
SS
1759QTDisconnected
1760 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1761
4daf5ac0
SS
1762QTBuffer:circular
1763 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1764
d5551862
SS
1765qTfP, qTsP
1766 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1767
2d483d34
MS
1768* Bug fixes
1769
1770Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1771
6e0e5977
JB
1772Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1773much more reliable. In particular:
1774 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1775 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1776 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1777 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1778 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1779 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1780 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1781 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1782 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1783 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1784 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1785 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1786 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1787 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1788 non-threaded programs.
1789
93c26624
JK
1790PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1791This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1792libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1793executable program.
1794
abc7453d 1795*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1796
4efc6507
DE
1797* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1798dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1799them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1800for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1801"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1802
782b2b07
SS
1803* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1804breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1805or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1806the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1807for tracepoint actions.
1808
53a71c06
CR
1809* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1810raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1811modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1812
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1813* Process record and replay
1814
1815 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1816 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1817 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1818 execute commands.
1819
64644d9b
MS
1820* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1821step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1822set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1823reverse execution.
1824
b9412953
DD
1825* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1826feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
18272.6.28 or later.
1828
6c7a06a3
TT
1829* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1830target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1831char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1832literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1833U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1834`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1835system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1836the installation instructions for more information.
1837
f1838a98
UW
1838* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1839remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1840with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1841the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1842
55333a84
DE
1843* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1844and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1845
7f6a6314
PM
1846* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1847now complete on file names.
1848
65d12d83
TT
1849* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1850completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1851For instance, consider:
1852
1853 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1854 # struct example variable;
1855 (gdb) p variable.
1856
1857If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1858completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1859
edb3359d
DJ
1860* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1861the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1862
2fae03e8
TT
1863* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1864operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1865macros.
1866
47a3467a 1867* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1868the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1869implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1870
1871* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1872registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1873can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1874and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1875
08388c79
DE
1876* New remote packets
1877
1878qSearch:memory:
1879 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1880
a6f3e723
SL
1881QStartNoAckMode
1882 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1883 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1884 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1885
d7713ae0
EZ
1886vKill
1887 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1888 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1889
07e059b5
VP
1890qXfer:osdata:read
1891 Obtains additional operating system information
1892
47a3467a
PA
1893qXfer:siginfo:read
1894qXfer:siginfo:write
1895 Read or write additional signal information.
1896
060871df
PA
1897* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1898
1899 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1900 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1901 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1902
c055b101 1903* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1904DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1905
1906* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1907and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1908`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1909
31fffb02
CS
1910* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1911with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1912
88d8a8e0
JB
1913* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1914
7f99b190
JB
1915* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1916
ccd213ac
DJ
1917* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1918which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1919
1fddbabb 1920* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1921list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1922
a0ef4274
DJ
1923* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1924conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1925have also been fixed.
1926
bfb8797a 1927* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1928From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1929are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1930
71c25dea
TT
1931* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1932example, given:
1933
1934 template<typename T> class C { };
1935 C<char const *> c;
1936
1937GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1938
1939 ptype C<char const *>
1940 ptype C<char const*>
1941 ptype C<const char *>
1942 ptype C<const char*>
1943
ccd213ac
DJ
1944* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1945
1946 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1947 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1948
7ae0e2a2
UW
1949 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1950 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1951 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1952
a6f3e723
SL
1953 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1954 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1955
da8bd9a3
DJ
1956 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1957 gdbserver.
1958
d70e31dd
DE
1959 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1960 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1961
1962 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1963 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1964 as appropriate.
1965
d57a3c85
TJB
1966* Python scripting
1967
1968 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1969 available is determined at configure time.
1970
d8906c6f
TJB
1971 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1972
aadc346a
JB
1973* Ada tasking support
1974
1975 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1976 been introduced:
1977
1978 info tasks
1979 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1980 info task N
1981 Print detailed information about task number N.
1982 task
1983 Print the task number of the current task.
1984 task N
1985 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1986
adb483fe
DJ
1987* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1988add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1989
2277426b
PA
1990* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1991
1992 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1993 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1994 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1995 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1996 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1997 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1998 below.
1999
08d16641
PA
2000* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2001"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2002information.
2003
e35359c5
UW
2004* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2005to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2006architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2007See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2008more information.
2009
85e747d2
UW
2010* Multi-architecture debugging.
2011
2012 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2013 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2014 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2015 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2016 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2017
2018* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2019use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2020Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2021powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2022--enable-targets configure option.
2023
11ade57a
PA
2024* Non-stop mode debugging.
2025
2026 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2027 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2028 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2029 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2030 section in the user manual for more information.
2031
2032 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2033 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2034 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2035 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2036 extensions on linux targets.
2037
d7713ae0 2038* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2039
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2040catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2041 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2042 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2043 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2044 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2045 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2046 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2047 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2048 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2049
08388c79
DE
2050find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2051 val1 [, val2, ...]
2052 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2053
d57a3c85
TJB
2054maint set python print-stack
2055maint show python print-stack
2056 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2057
2058python [CODE]
2059 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2060
d7713ae0
EZ
2061macro define
2062macro list
2063macro undef
2064 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2065 interactively.
2066
2067info os processes
2068 Show operating system information about processes.
2069
2277426b
PA
2070info inferiors
2071 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2072
2073inferior NUM
2074 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2075
2076detach inferior NUM
2077 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2078
2079kill inferior NUM
2080 Kill inferior number NUM.
2081
d7713ae0
EZ
2082* New options
2083
3285f3fe
UW
2084set spu stop-on-load
2085show spu stop-on-load
2086 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2087
ff1a52c6
UW
2088set spu auto-flush-cache
2089show spu auto-flush-cache
2090 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2091 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2092
d7713ae0
EZ
2093set sh calling-convention
2094show sh calling-convention
2095 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2096
e0a3ce09 2097set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2098show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2099 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2100
2101set disassemble-next-line
2102show disassemble-next-line
2103 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2104 the debuggee stops.
2105
2106set remote noack-packet
2107show remote noack-packet
2108 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2109 under "New remote packets."
2110
2111set remote query-attached-packet
2112show remote query-attached-packet
2113 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2114
2115set remote read-siginfo-object
2116show remote read-siginfo-object
2117 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2118 packet.
2119
2120set remote write-siginfo-object
2121show remote write-siginfo-object
2122 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2123 packet.
2124
40ab02ce
MS
2125set remote reverse-continue
2126show remote reverse-continue
2127 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2128
2129set remote reverse-step
2130show remote reverse-step
2131 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2132
d7713ae0
EZ
2133set displaced-stepping
2134show displaced-stepping
2135 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2136 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2137 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2138
2139set debug displaced
2140show debug displaced
2141 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2142
2143maint set internal-error
2144maint show internal-error
2145 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2146
2147maint set internal-warning
2148maint show internal-warning
2149 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2150
ccd213ac
DJ
2151set exec-wrapper
2152show exec-wrapper
2153unset exec-wrapper
2154 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2155
aad4b048
JB
2156set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2157show multiple-symbols
2158 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2159 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2160 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2161
74960c60
VP
2162set breakpoint always-inserted
2163show breakpoint always-inserted
2164 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2165 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2166 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2167
0428b8f5
DJ
2168set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2169show arm fallback-mode
2170set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2171show arm force-mode
2172 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2173 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2174 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2175 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2176
10568435
JK
2177set disable-randomization
2178show disable-randomization
2179 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2180 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2181 multiple debugging sessions.
2182
d7713ae0
EZ
2183set non-stop
2184show non-stop
2185 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2186 a breakpoint.
2187
b3eb342c 2188set target-async
d7713ae0 2189show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2190 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2191 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2192 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2193 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2194
6c7a06a3
TT
2195set target-wide-charset
2196show target-wide-charset
2197 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2198 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2199
84603566
SL
2200set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2201show tcp auto-retry
2202set tcp connect-timeout
2203show tcp connect-timeout
2204 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2205 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2206 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2207
17a37d48
PP
2208set libthread-db-search-path
2209show libthread-db-search-path
2210 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2211 libthread_db.
2212
d4db2f36
PA
2213set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2214show schedule-multiple
2215 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2216 the current process.
2217
4e5d721f
DE
2218set stack-cache
2219show stack-cache
2220 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2221 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2222 affecting correctness.
2223
910c5da8
JB
2224set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2225show interactive-mode
2226 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2227 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2228 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2229 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2230 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2231
2277426b
PA
2232* Removed commands
2233
2234info forks
2235 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2236 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2237 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2238 command.
2239
2240fork NUM
2241 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2242 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2243 alias for the `fork' command.
2244
2245process PID
2246 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2247 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2248 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2249
2250delete fork NUM
2251 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2252 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2253 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2254 fork' command.
2255
2256detach fork NUM
2257 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2258 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2259 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2260 fork' command.
2261
a80b95ba
TG
2262* New native configurations
2263
2264x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2265
b8bfd3ed
JB
2266x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2267
75a2d5e7
TT
2268* New targets
2269
c28c63d8 2270Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2271x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2272x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2273S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2274
6de3146c
PA
2275* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2276 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2277
d5cbbe6e
JB
2278* Removed commands
2279
2280catch load
2281catch unload
2282 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2283
75feb17d 2284*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2285
af5ca30d
NH
2286* New native configurations
2287
2288NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2289Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2290
2291* New targets
2292
2293NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2294Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2295
7a404eba
PA
2296* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2297
2298 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2299 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2300 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2301 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2302
430ebac9
PA
2303* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2304(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2305
fe6fbf8b 2306* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2307is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2308
2309* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2310including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2311and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2312
10665d76
JB
2313* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2314accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2315more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2316
7cc46491
DJ
2317* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2318
d71340b8
DJ
2319* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2320registers on PowerPC targets.
2321
523c4513
DJ
2322* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2323targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2324
a6b151f1
DJ
2325* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2326commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2327
2d717e4f
DJ
2328* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2329extended-remote mode.
2330
24a836bd 2331* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2332The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2333error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2334The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2335
d0c678e6
UW
2336* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2337building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2338target architectures.
2339
d64a946d
TJB
2340* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2341Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2342now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2343stored in two consecutive float registers.
2344
ee163bf5
VP
2345* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2346breakpoints now.
2347
b93b6ca7 2348* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2349Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2350include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2351 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2352 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2353 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2354 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2355 of an assignment
2356 - Improved command completion in Ada
2357 - Several bug fixes
2358
d001be7a
DJ
2359* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2360process.
2361
a6b151f1
DJ
2362* New commands
2363
6d53d0af
JB
2364set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2365show print frame-arguments
2366 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2367 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2368
a6b151f1
DJ
2369remote put
2370remote get
2371remote delete
2372 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2373
2374* New MI commands
2375
2376-target-file-put
2377-target-file-get
2378-target-file-delete
2379 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2380
2381* New remote packets
2382
2383vFile:open:
2384vFile:close:
2385vFile:pread:
2386vFile:pwrite:
2387vFile:unlink:
2388 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2389
2d717e4f
DJ
2390vAttach
2391 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2392 mode.
2393
2394vRun
2395 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2396
8d5f9c6f 2397*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2398
19d378fc
MS
2399* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2400bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2401Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2402
3a40aaa0
UW
2403* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2404symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2405-Bsymbolic linker option.
2406
a6ec25f2
BW
2407* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2408recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2409is not supported.
2410
6dd09645
JB
2411* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2412frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2413
c9bb8148
DJ
2414* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
241532-bit or 64-bit register values.
2416
0d5de010
DJ
2417* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2418
23181151
DJ
2419* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2420target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2421a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2422
ea37ba09
DJ
2423* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2424automatically displayed as character or string data.
2425
2426* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2427arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2428as strings.
e1f48ead 2429
123dc839
DJ
2430* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2431for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2432only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2433
05a4558a
DJ
2434* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2435iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2436
7c963485
PA
2437* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2438ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2439has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2440
b18be20d
DJ
2441* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2442
0ca420ce
UW
2443* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2444
31d99776
DJ
2445* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2446layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2447segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2448
a4642986
MR
2449* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2450immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2451
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2452* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2453"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2454packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2455where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2456Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2457
2458* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2459(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2460
2461* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2462according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2463
c9bb8148
DJ
2464* New commands
2465
23776285
MR
2466set remoteflow
2467show remoteflow
2468 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2469 when debugging using remote targets.
2470
c9bb8148
DJ
2471set mem inaccessible-by-default
2472show mem inaccessible-by-default
2473 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2474 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2475 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2476 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2477 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2478
2479set breakpoint auto-hw
2480show breakpoint auto-hw
2481 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2482 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2483 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2484 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2485 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2486 including "next" and "finish".
2487
0e420bd8
JB
2488catch exception
2489catch exception unhandled
2490 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2491
2492catch assert
2493 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2494
f822c95b
DJ
2495set sysroot
2496show sysroot
2497 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2498 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2499 an alias to "set sysroot".
2500
83cc5c53
UW
2501info spu
2502 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2503 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2504 architecture.
2505
bd372731
MK
2506* New native configurations
2507
2508OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2509
23181151
DJ
2510set tdesc filename
2511unset tdesc filename
2512show tdesc filename
2513 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2514 not query the target for its built-in description.
2515
c9bb8148
DJ
2516* New targets
2517
54fe9172 2518OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2519MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2520Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2521
6dd09645
JB
2522* New remote packets
2523
2524QPassSignals:
2525 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2526 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2527
23181151
DJ
2528qXfer:features:read:
2529 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2530 features.
6dd09645 2531
83cc5c53
UW
2532qXfer:spu:read:
2533qXfer:spu:write:
2534 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2535 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2536
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2537qXfer:libraries:read:
2538 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2539 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2540 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2541 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2542
483367ee
DJ
2543* Removed targets
2544
2545Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2546
d08950c4
UW
2547alpha*-*-osf1*
2548alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2549d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2550hppa*-*-hiux*
2551i[34567]86-ncr-*
2552i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2553i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2554i[34567]86-*-netware*
2555i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2556i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2557i[34567]86-*-sco*
2558i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2559i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2560i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2561i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2562i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2563i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2564i[34567]86-*-isc*
2565m68*-cisco*-*
2566m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2567mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2568rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2569sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2570
7ce59000
DJ
2571* Other removed features
2572
2573target abug
2574target cpu32bug
2575target est
2576target rom68k
2577
2578 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2579
ea35711c
DJ
2580target hms
2581target e7000
2582target sh3
2583target sh3e
2584
2585 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2586 H8/300.
2587
2588target ocd
2589
2590 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2591 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2592 interfaces.
2593
7ce59000
DJ
2594DWARF 1 support
2595
2596 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2597 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2598
54d61198
DJ
2599Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2600
2601 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2602 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2603 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2604 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2605
ea35711c
DJ
2606MIPS ".pdr" sections
2607
2608 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2609 in debugging information.
2610
2611Scheme support
2612
2613 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2614 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2615
1a69e1e4
DJ
2616set mips stack-arg-size
2617set mips saved-gpreg-size
2618
2619 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2620
6dd09645 2621*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2622
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2623* New targets
2624
2625Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2626Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2627
6aec2e11
DJ
2628* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2629(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2630running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2631
2632* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2633Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2634supported.
2635
17218d91
DJ
2636* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2637broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2638
9ebce043
DJ
2639* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2640stub provides the required support.
2641
7d3d3ece
DJ
2642* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2643longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2644
4f8253f3
JB
2645* New commands
2646
2647set substitute-path
2648unset substitute-path
2649show substitute-path
2650 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2651 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2652 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2653 between compilation and debugging.
2654
9fa66fd7
AS
2655set trace-commands
2656show trace-commands
2657 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2658 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2659 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2660
1f5befc1
DJ
2661* REMOVED features
2662
2663The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2664
2ec3381a
DJ
2665Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2666an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2667
3d00d119
DJ
2668The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2669
be2a5f71
DJ
2670* New remote packets
2671
2672qSupported:
2673 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2674 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2675 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2676 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2677 target.
2678
0876f84a
DJ
2679qXfer:auxv:read:
2680 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2681 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2682
9ebce043
DJ
2683qXfer:memory-map:read:
2684 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2685 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2686
2687vFlashErase:
2688vFlashWrite:
2689vFlashDone:
2690 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2691
0876f84a
DJ
2692* Removed remote packets
2693
2694qPart:auxv:read:
2695 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2696 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2697
e374b601 2698*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2699
96309189
MS
2700* New targets
2701
2702Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2703
2704Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2705
53e5f3cf
AS
2706* New commands
2707
2708init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2709 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2710
ac264b3b
MS
2711The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2712
2713checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2714
2715restart <n> Return the program state to a
2716 previously saved state.
2717
2718info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2719
2720delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2721
2722set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2723 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2724
2725info forks List forks of the user program that
2726 are available to be debugged.
2727
2728fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2729 forks of the user program that are
2730 available to be debugged.
2731
2732delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2733 that are available to be debugged (and
2734 kill the forked process).
2735
2736detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2737 that are available to be debugged (and
2738 allow the process to continue).
2739
3950dc3f
NS
2740* New architecture
2741
2742Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2743
0ea3f30e
DJ
2744* Improved Windows host support
2745
2746GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2747native console support, and remote communications using either
2748network sockets or serial ports.
2749
f79daebb
GM
2750* Improved Modula-2 language support
2751
2752GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2753basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2754pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2755printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2756written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2757GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2758
acab6ab2
MM
2759* REMOVED features
2760
2761The ARM rdi-share module.
2762
f4267320
DJ
2763The Netware NLM debug server.
2764
53e5f3cf 2765*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2766
e0ecbda1
MK
2767* New native configurations
2768
02a677ac 2769OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2770OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2771
d64a6579
KB
2772* New targets
2773
2774Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2775
b33a6190
AS
2776* New command line options
2777
2778--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2779--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2780 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2781--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2782 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2783 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2784 with the --command (-x) option.
2785
11dced61
AC
2786* Deprecated commands removed
2787
2788The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2789removed:
2790
2791 Command Replacement
2792 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2793 othernames set arm disassembler
2794 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2795 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2796 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2797 regs info registers
2798
6fe85783
MK
2799* New BSD user-level threads support
2800
2801It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2802library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2803configurations are:
2804
2805FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2806FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2807OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2808
2809Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2810are not yet supported.
2811
5260ca71
MS
2812* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2813(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2814
e84ecc99
AC
2815* REMOVED configurations and files
2816
2817VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2818Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2819National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2820
31e35378
JB
2821* New "set print array-indexes" command
2822
2823After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2824when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2825behavior.
2826
e85e5c83
MK
2827* VAX floating point support
2828
2829GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2830
d91e9901
AS
2831* User-defined command support
2832
2833In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2834to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2835section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2836
f2cb65ca
MC
2837*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2838
f47b1503
AS
2839* New command line option
2840
2841GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2842debugging.
2843
f2cb65ca
MC
2844* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2845
2846GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2847information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2848by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2849proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2850to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2851
d08c0230
AC
2852* Internationalization
2853
2854When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2855internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2856continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2857
117ea3cf
PH
2858* Ada
2859
2860Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2861implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2862into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2863
d08c0230
AC
2864* New native configurations
2865
2866GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2867
2868* Remote 'p' packet
2869
2870GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2871packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2872
2873* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2874
2875GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2876The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2877features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2878i386 application).
2879
2880GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2881compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2882continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2883configurations:
2884
2885hppa-*-hpux
2886ia64-*-aix
2887mips-*-irix*
2888*-*-lynx
2889mips-*-linux-gnu
2890sds protocol
2891xdr protocol
2892powerpc bdm protocol
2893
2894Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2895made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2896
2897* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2898
2899Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2900been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2901configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2902permanently REMOVED.
2903
2904h8300-*-*
2905mcore-*-*
2906mn10300-*-*
2907ns32k-*-*
2908sh64-*-*
2909v850-*-*
2910
ebb7c577
AC
2911*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2912
2913* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2914
2915When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2916heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2917been fixed.
2918
2919* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2920
2921When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2922fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2923IRIX long double values).
2924
2925* VAX and "next"
2926
2927A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2928command. This problem has been fixed.
2929
860660cb 2930*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2931
0dea2468
AC
2932* Fix for ``many threads''
2933
2934On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2935rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2936error message:
2937
2938 ptrace: No such process.
2939 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2940
2941This problem has been fixed.
2942
2c07db7a
AC
2943* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2944
2945Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2946GDB to dump core).
2947
c23968a2
JB
2948* New ``start'' command.
2949
2950This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2951
71009278
MK
2952* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2953
2954Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2955live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2956platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2957
2958FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2959FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2960NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2961NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2962NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2963OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2964OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2965OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2966OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2967
3c0b7db2
AC
2968* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2969
2970Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2971These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2972of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2973call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2974signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2975
73cc75f3
AC
2976Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2977features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2978include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2979
7243600a
BF
2980* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2981
6f606e1c
MK
2982* New native configurations
2983
97dc871c 2984GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2985OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2986OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2987OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2988OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2989NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2990OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2991
a1b461bf
AC
2992* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2993
2994GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2995The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2996including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2997migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2998compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2999work, was also included.
3000
3001GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3002module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3003
3004h8300-*-*
3005mcore-*-*
3006mn10300-*-*
3007ns32k-*-*
3008sh64-*-*
3009v850-*-*
3010xstormy16-*-*
3011
3012Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3013made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3014
3c7012f5
AC
3015* REMOVED configurations and files
3016
3017Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3018Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3019Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3020Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3021Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3022AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3023Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3024decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3025riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3026sonymips mips-sony-*
3027sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3028
e5fe55f7
AC
3029*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3030
3031* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3032
3033The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3034GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3035command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3036program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3037with GDB".
3038
3039* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3040
3041Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3042libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3043cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3044GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3045shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3046the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3047are created.
3048
3049Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3050
3051* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3052
3053The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3054non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3055compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3056
3057* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3058
3059Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3060wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3061
3062* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3063
3064The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3065permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3066systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3067
3068* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3069
3070Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3071has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3072
3073* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3074
3075GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3076its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3077panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3078
3079* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3080
3081When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3082by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3083not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3084
faae5abe 3085*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3086
9175c9a3
MC
3087* Removed --with-mmalloc
3088
3089Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3090conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3091
3cc87ec0
MK
3092* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3093
3094The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3095the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3096and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3097you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3098
f0424ef6
MK
3099* Revised SPARC target
3100
3101The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3102FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3103support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3104from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3105(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3106
59659be2
ILT
3107* New C++ demangler
3108
3109GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3110names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3111with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3112programs.
3113
9e08b29b
DJ
3114* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3115
3116GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3117arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3118encountered these.
3119
8dfe8985
DC
3120* C++ nested types and namespaces
3121
3122GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3123improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3124is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3125Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3126namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3127"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3128frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3129if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3130GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3131
cced5e27
MK
3132* New native configurations
3133
3134NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3135OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3136OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3137OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3138OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3139
b4b4b794
KI
3140* New debugging protocols
3141
3142M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3143
7989c619
AC
3144* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3145
3146The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3147and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3148tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3149
5994185b
AC
3150* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3151
3152Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3153been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3154configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3155permanently REMOVED.
3156
3157Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3158Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3159Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3160Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3161Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3162AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3163Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3164decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3165riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3166sonymips mips-sony-*
3167sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3168
0ddabb4c
AC
3169* REMOVED configurations and files
3170
3171SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3172SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3173Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3174Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3175H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3176HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3177HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3178HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3179PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3180386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3181Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3182 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3183 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3184SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3185SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3186Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3187Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3188
c7f1390e
DJ
3189*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3190
1fe43d45
AC
3191* Objective-C
3192
3193Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3194integrated into GDB.
3195
e6beb428
AC
3196* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3197
3198DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3199information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3200By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3201backtraces.
3202
3203The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3204have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3205DWARF 2 CFI support.
3206
3207* Hosted file I/O.
3208
3209GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3210file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3211remote protocol documentation for details.
3212
3213* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3214
3215All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3216architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3217to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3218ppc32 on ppc64).
3219
3220* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3221
3222GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3223per-thread variables.
3224
3225* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3226
3227GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3228GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3229
3230* Separate debug info.
3231
3232GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3233automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3234of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3235system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3236and optional debug files.
3237
3238* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3239
3240DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3241describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3242debugger.
3243
3244GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3245for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3246
3247* Java
3248
3249A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3250Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3251considered "useable".
3252
85f8f974
DJ
3253* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3254
3255The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3256commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3257kernel.
3258
0fac0b41
DJ
3259* GDB supports logging output to a file
3260
3261There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3262used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3263
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3264* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3265
3266The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3267disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3268command.
3269
e286caf2 3270* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3271
3272The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3273registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3274
d28f9cdf
DJ
3275* Profiling support
3276
3277A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3278be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3279session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3280"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3281data, for more informative profiling results.
3282
da0f9dcd
AC
3283* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3284
3285The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3286option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3287"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3288
3289Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3290removed.
3291
fb9b6b35
JJ
3292Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3293Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3294Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3295 in a subsequent -var-update.
3296
954a4db8
MK
3297* New native configurations.
3298
3299FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3300
6760f9e6
JB
3301* Multi-arched targets.
3302
b4263afa 3303HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3304Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3305
1b831c93
AC
3306* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3307
3308Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3309been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3310configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3311permanently REMOVED.
3312
8b0e5691 3313Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3314Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3315H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3316HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3317HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3318HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3319PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3320Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3321 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3322 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3323Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3324Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3325
5835abe7
NC
3326* REMOVED configurations and files
3327
3328V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3329Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3330IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3331i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3332i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3333i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3334HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3335 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3336 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3337Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3338Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3339Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3340OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3341I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3342
a094c6fb
AC
3343* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3344
3345The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3346the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3347context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3348address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3349The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3350
299ffc64 3351*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3352
46248966
AC
3353* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3354
3355When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3356`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3357in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3358library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3359shared libs like mad''.
3360
b9d14705 3361* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3362
b9d14705
DJ
3363Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3364the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3365arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3366powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3367
e0e9281e
JB
3368* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3369
3370GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3371and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3372they expand.
3373
dd73b9bb
AC
3374The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3375invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3376
3377The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3378macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3379
e0e9281e
JB
3380Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3381information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3382your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3383information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3384
2250ee0c
CV
3385* Multi-arched targets.
3386
6e3ba3b8
JT
3387DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3388DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3389NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3390National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3391Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3392Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3393
cd9bfe15 3394* New targets.
e33ce519 3395
456f8b9d
DB
3396Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3397
e33ce519 3398
da8ca43d
JT
3399* New native configurations
3400
3401Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3402SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3403MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3404UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3405
cd9bfe15
AC
3406* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3407
3408Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3409been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3410configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3411permanently REMOVED.
3412
92eb23c5 3413Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3414OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3415IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3416Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3417Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3418Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3419i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3420i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3421i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3422HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3423 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3424 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3425I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3426
db034ac5
AC
3427* OBSOLETE languages
3428
3429CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3430
cd9bfe15
AC
3431* REMOVED configurations and files
3432
3433AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3434A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3435AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3436AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3437AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3438
3439testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3440
20f01a46
DH
3441* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3442
3443This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3444commands. The default is 1024.
3445
a5941fbf
MK
3446* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3447
3448Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3449
89743e04
MS
3450* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3451
3452These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3453to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3454from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3455
9fb14e79
JB
3456* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3457
3458The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3459including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3460of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3461
2037aebb
AC
3462*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3463
3464* New targets.
3465
3466Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3467
3468* Bug fixes
3469
3470gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3471mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3472Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3473
3474gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3475dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3476Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3477
3478Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3479Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3480By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3481
3482i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3483avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3484By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3485
37057839 3486*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3487
1a703748
MS
3488* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3489
3490This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3491really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3492In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3493target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3494This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3495(notably embedded) targets.
3496
cefd4ef5
MS
3497* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3498
55241689
AC
3499This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3500process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3501GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3502hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3503
352ed7b4
MS
3504* New command line option
3505
3506GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3507
3508* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3509
3510There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3511command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3512a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3513be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3514open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3515issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3516a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3517it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3518GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3519is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3520
fe419ffc
RE
3521* Changes in ARM configurations.
3522
3523Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3524configuration is fully multi-arch.
3525
eb7cedd9
MK
3526* New native configurations
3527
fe419ffc 3528ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3529x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3530AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3531Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3532
c9f63e6b
CV
3533* New targets
3534
3535Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3536
9b4ff276
AC
3537* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3538
3539Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3540been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3541configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3542permanently REMOVED.
3543
3544AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3545A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3546AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3547AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3548AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3549
b4ceaee6 3550testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3551
e2caac18
AC
3552* REMOVED configurations and files
3553
3554TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3555WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3556PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3557PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3558PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3559Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3560Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3561 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3562SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3563Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3564Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3565ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3566Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3567
c2a727fa
TT
3568* Changes to command line processing
3569
3570The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3571for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3572
467d8519
TT
3573* Changes to key bindings
3574
3575There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3576
7072a954
AC
3577*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3578
3579Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3580
3581Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3582corrupted.
3583
3584Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3585
3586Numerous documentation fixes.
3587
3588Numerous testsuite fixes.
3589
34f47bc4 3590*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3591
3592* New native configurations
3593
3594Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3595x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3596MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3597MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3598ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3599s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3600
bf64bfd6
AC
3601* New targets
3602
def90278 3603Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3604CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3605UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3606
17e78a56 3607* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3608
3609x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3610Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3611Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3612 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3613TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3614WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3615Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3616PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3617PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3618PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3619SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3620Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3621ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3622Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3623
17e78a56
AC
3624stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3625kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3626
7fcca85b
AC
3627Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3628been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3629configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3630permanently REMOVED.
3631
a196c81c 3632* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3633
3634Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3635Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3636Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3637ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3638Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3639ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3640
6d6b80e5 3641* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3642
6d6b80e5 3643GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3644sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3645present.
3646
bf64bfd6
AC
3647* Other news:
3648
e23194cb
EZ
3649* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3650
3651* The MI enabled by default.
3652
3653The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3654revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3655engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3656using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3657which is now deprecated.
3658
3659* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3660
3661GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3662main features are supported:
3663
3664 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3665
3666 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3667 extension;
3668
3669 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3670
3671 - a Pascal expression parser.
3672
3673However, some important features are not yet supported.
3674
3675 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3676
3677 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3678
3679 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3680 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3681
3682 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3683
3684 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3685
3686* Changes in completion.
3687
3688Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3689to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3690users expect at the shell prompt.
3691
3692Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3693`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3694program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3695files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3696be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3697considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3698name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3699
3700`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3701
3702* New platform-independent commands:
3703
3704It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3705hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3706documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3707
3708* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3709
d7275149
MK
3710Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3711revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3712many threads as your system allows you to have.
3713
e23194cb
EZ
3714Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3715
d7275149
MK
3716Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3717multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3718
3719* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3720
3721Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3722
e23194cb
EZ
3723GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3724debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3725supported.)
3726
3727* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3728
3729Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3730breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3731implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3732put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3733and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3734registers.
3735
3736The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3737debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3738watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3739
3740* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3741
3742New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3743the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3744
3745New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3746display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3747IDT.
3748
3749New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3750from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3751New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3752a given linear address.
3753
3754GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3755program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3756which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3757
3758DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3759
6c56c069
EZ
3760It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3761
e23194cb
EZ
3762* Changes in documentation.
3763
3764All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3765Documentation License.
3766
3767Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3768manual.
3769
3770TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3771
3772Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3773manual.
3774
3775The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3776documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3777hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3778
5d6640b1
AC
3779* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3780
3781The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3782``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3783contents of this file.
3784
1a1d8446
AC
3785* gdba.el deleted
3786
3787GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3788
9debab2f 3789*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3790
c63ce875
EZ
3791* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3792
3793Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3794programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3795displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3796greater level of detail.
3797
3798* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3799
3800It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3801bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3802on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3803written.
3804
3805* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3806
3807The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3808necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3809machines ``out of the box''.
3810
3811The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3812possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3813signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3814would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3815interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3816
3817It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3818standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3819even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3820and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3821terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3822
3823The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3824enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3825also works.
3826
3827DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3828GDB.
3829
3830It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3831directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3832times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3833breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3834
ed9a39eb
JM
3835* New native configurations
3836
3837ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3838PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3839
7a292a7a
SS
3840* New targets
3841
96baa820 3842Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3843x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3844PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3845TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3846
085dd6e6
JM
3847* OBSOLETE configurations
3848
3849Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3850Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3851Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3852ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3853Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3854
9debab2f
AC
3855Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3856but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3857these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3858be permanently REMOVED.
3859
5330533d
SS
3860* Gould support removed
3861
3862Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3863
bc9e5bbf
AC
3864* New features for SVR4
3865
3866On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3867without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3868load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3869
3870* Many C++ enhancements
3871
3872C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3873in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3874
adf40b2e
JM
3875* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3876
3877A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3878sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3879with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3880``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3881
3882 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3883 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3884
43e526b9
JM
3885* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3886
3887A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3888expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3889instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3890
3891The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3892added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3893
96baa820
JM
3894* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3895
3896The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3897``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3898include ``set remote P-packet''.
3899
11cf8741
JM
3900* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3901
3902The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3903accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3904``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3905
7876dd43
DB
3906* ``apropos'' command added.
3907
3908The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3909documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3910try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3911
bc9e5bbf
AC
3912* New MI interface
3913
3914A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3915interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3916process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3917"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3918enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3919
3920 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3921
c906108c
SS
3922*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3923
3924* New native configurations
3925
3926HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3927HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3928M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3929
3930* New targets
3931
3932Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3933Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3934Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3935
3936* OBSOLETE configurations
3937
3938Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3939
3940Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3941but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3942these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3943be permanently REMOVED.
3944
3945* ANSI/ISO C
3946
3947As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3948buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3949containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3950use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3951available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3952configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3953information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3954already.
3955
3956* Readline 2.2
3957
3958GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3959
3960* set extension-language
3961
3962You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3963languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3964you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3965 set extension-language .c c++
3966The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3967and their associated languages.
3968
3969* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3970
3971When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3972you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3973PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3974
3975 set processor NAME
3976
3977sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3978following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3979
3980 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3981 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3982 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3983 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3984 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3985 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3986 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3987 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3988 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3989 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3990 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3991
3992At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3993special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3994registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3995only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3996
3997* HP-UX support
3998
3999Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4000more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4001library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4002support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4003for xdb and dbx commands.
4004
4005* Catchpoints
4006
4007HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4008generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4009to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4010
4011This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4012argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4013output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4014
4015* Debugging across forks
4016
4017On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4018in the inferior.
4019
4020* TUI
4021
4022HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4023it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4024configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4025
4026* GDB remote protocol additions
4027
4028A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4029Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4030fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4031allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4032
4033For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4034full 64-bit address. The command
4035
4036 set remoteaddresssize 32
4037
4038can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4039the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4040will be discarded.
4041
4042In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4043command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4044
4045 maint packet heythere
4046
4047sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4048disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4049time.
4050
4051The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4052target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4053downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4054
4055* Tracing can collect general expressions
4056
4057You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4058further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4059doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4060
4061* mask-address variable for Mips
4062
4063For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4064a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4065of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4066
4067* Higher serial baud rates
4068
4069GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4070230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4071to achieve all of these rates.)
4072
4073* i960 simulator
4074
4075The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4076builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4077
4078
4079*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4080
4081* New native configurations
4082
4083Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4084Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4085Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4086PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4087PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4088Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4089Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4090
4091* New targets
4092
4093Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4094Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4095Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4096Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4097MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4098MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4099MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4100Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4101Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4102Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4103NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4104
4105* New debugging protocols
4106
4107ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4108M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4109DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4110PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4111PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4112Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4113
4114* DWARF 2
4115
4116All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4117format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4118information.
4119
4120* Java frontend
4121
4122GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4123only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4124
4125* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4126
4127For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4128loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4129locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4130
4131* Live range splitting
4132
4133GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4134range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4135more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4136
4137* Hurd support
4138
4139GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4140updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4141
4142* ARM Thumb support
4143
4144GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4145instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4146instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4147accordingly.
4148
4149* MIPS16 support
4150
4151GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4152instruction set.
4153
4154* Overlay support
4155
4156GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4157linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4158will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4159control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4160additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4161in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4162
4163* info symbol
4164
4165The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4166the symbol at the specified address.
4167
4168* Trace support
4169
4170The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4171asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4172extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4173includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4174file tracepoint.c for more details.
4175
4176* MIPS simulator
4177
4178Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4179by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4180of most MIPS variants.
4181
4182* Sparc simulator
4183
4184Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4185by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4186Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4187
4188* set architecture
4189
4190For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4191basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4192architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4193the possible architectures.
4194
4195*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4196
4197* New native configurations
4198
4199Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4200M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4201PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4202PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4203PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4204RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4205
4206* New targets
4207
4208ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4209I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4210MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4211MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4212PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4213Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4214Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4215
4216* PowerPC simulator
4217
4218The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4219contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4220PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4221basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4222performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4223
4224* Solaris 2.5
4225
4226GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4227
4228* Windows 95/NT native
4229
4230GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4231To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4232which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4233Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4234ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4235
4236* dont-repeat command
4237
4238If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4239command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4240useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4241extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4242
4243* Send break instead of ^C
4244
4245The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4246rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4247GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4248
4249* Remote protocol timeout
4250
4251The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4252that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4253to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4254
4255* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4256
4257By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4258loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4259stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4260when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4261in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4262
4263Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4264/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4265automatically on hpux10.
4266
4267* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4268
4269Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4270
4271* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4272
4273When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4274may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4275the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4276every character. The default value is 1050.
4277
4278* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4279
4280If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4281a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4282replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4283details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4284remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4285to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4286
4287* Speedups for remote debugging
4288
4289GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4290the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4291and more efficient S-record downloading.
4292
4293* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4294
4295GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4296Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4297
4298*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4299
4300* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4301
4302The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4303can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4304
4305* Remote targets use caching
4306
4307Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4308remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4309it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4310debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4311off' turns the the data cache off.
4312
4313* Remote targets may have threads
4314
4315The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4316in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4317gdb/remote.c for details.
4318
4319* NetROM support
4320
4321If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4322support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4323acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4324write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4325support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4326another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4327sequence is something like
4328
4329 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4330 load <prog>
4331 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4332
4333* Macintosh host
4334
4335GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4336may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4337it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4338available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4339device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4340directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4341scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4342mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4343
4344* Autoconf
4345
4346GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4347but does simplify configuration and building.
4348
4349* hpux10
4350
4351GDB now supports hpux10.
4352
4353*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4354
4355* New native configurations
4356
4357x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4358x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4359NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4360Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4361
4362* New targets
4363
4364A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4365HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4366CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4367PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4368WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4369
4370* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4371
4372GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4373possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4374filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4375the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4376if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4377
4378* Arguments to user-defined commands
4379
4380User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4381Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4382trivial example:
4383define adder
4384 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4385
4386To execute the command use:
4387adder 1 2 3
4388
4389Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4390Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4391use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4392
4393* New `if' and `while' commands
4394
4395This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4396commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4397expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4398execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4399terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4400`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4401if the expression is zero.
4402
4403* Fortran source language mode
4404
4405GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4406Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4407variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4408with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4409Fortran compilers.
4410
4411* Better HPUX support
4412
4413Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4414running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4415processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4416for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4417that behavior do the following before running the program:
4418
4419 adb -w a.out
4420 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4421 control-d
4422
4423This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4424To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4425
4426 adb -w a.out
4427 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4428 control-d
4429
4430You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4431the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4432external linkage.
4433
4434GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4435HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4436
4437* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4438
4439You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4440commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4441current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4442"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4443associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4444configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4445
4446* New DOS host serial code
4447
4448This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4449no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4450a PC's serial port.
4451
4452*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4453
4454* New "complete" command
4455
4456This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4457were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4458
4459* Trailing space optional in prompt
4460
4461"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4462allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4463
4464* Breakpoint hit counts
4465
4466"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4467has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4468can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4469to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4470less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4471that breakpoint.
4472
4473* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4474
4475"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4476an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4477arrays actually contain only short strings.
4478
4479* Shared library breakpoints
4480
4481In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4482breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4483
4484* Hardware watchpoints
4485
4486There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4487targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4488
55241689 4489Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4490
4491* Annotations
4492
4493Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4494and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4495
4496* Improved Irix 5 support
4497
4498GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4499
4500* Improved HPPA support
4501
4502GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4503
4504* New native configurations
4505
4506Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4507HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4508Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4509RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4510
4511* New targets
4512
4513OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4514MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4515Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4516
4517* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4518
4519There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4520This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4521
4522* Fixes
4523
4524As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4525and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4526
4527*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4528
4529* Irix 5 is now supported
4530
4531* HPPA support
4532
4533GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4534to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4535GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4536of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4537can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4538
4539
4540*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4541
4542* User visible changes:
4543
4544* Remote Debugging
4545
4546The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4547target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4548debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4549integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4550debugging info for the mips target).
4551
4552* DEC Alpha native support
4553
4554GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4555debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4556work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4557Alpha-specific notes.
4558
4559* Preliminary thread implementation
4560
4561GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4562
4563* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4564
4565This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4566to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4567for details).
4568
4569* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4570
4571This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4572mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4573call methods, ...etc.
4574
4575*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4576
4577 * User visible changes:
4578
4579Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4580supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4581other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4582somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4583
4584Filename completion now works.
4585
4586When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4587arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4588addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4589
4590All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4591vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4592should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4593your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4594to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4595
4596 * DEC alpha support
4597
4598This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4599cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4600
4601
4602*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4603
4604 * Testsuite
4605
4606This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4607The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4608via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4609
4610 * C++ demangling
4611
4612'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4613emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4614Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4615disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4616use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4617
4618 * Simulators
4619
4620GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4621So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4622Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4623
4624 * New targets supported
4625
4626H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4627H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4628SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4629Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4630IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4631
4632Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4633version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4634GO32 memory extender.
4635
4636 * New remote protocols
4637
4638MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4639
4640 * New source languages supported
4641
4642This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4643used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4644into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4645
4646
4647*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4648
4649 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4650
4651GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4652version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4653University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4654compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4655format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4656(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4657
4658Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4659
4660 * Faster and better demangling
4661
4662We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4663demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4664character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4665only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4666This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4667increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4668symbol lookups.
4669
4670`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4671from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4672compiler does not actually implement.
4673
4674 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4675
4676In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4677inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4678recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4679very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4680The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4681circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4682fix.
4683
4684The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4685release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4686
4687 * Improved configure script
4688
4689The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4690you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4691host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4692done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4693
4694We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4695version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4696`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4697The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4698only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4699We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4700
4701 * Documentation improvements
4702
4703There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4704produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4705before submitting changes.
4706
4707The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4708M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4709`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4710you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4711a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4712
4713*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4714We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4715been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4716or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4717`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4718around this problem.
4719
4720 * New features
4721
4722GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4723the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4724`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4725the target program.
4726
4727The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4728how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4729
4730 * New native hosts supported
4731
4732HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4733386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4734
4735 * New targets supported
4736
4737AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4738
4739 * New file formats supported
4740
4741BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4742HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4743
4744 * Major bug fixes
4745
4746Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4747
4748We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4749printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4750
4751We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4752for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4753release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4754
4755You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4756will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4757
4758We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4759for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4760especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4761libraries.
4762
4763The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4764information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4765command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4766any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4767when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4768
4769 * Internal improvements
4770
4771GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4772debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4773
4774GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4775Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4776symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4777contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4778shared code that handles any of them.
4779
4780 * New command line options
4781
4782We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4783
4784 * Mmalloc licensing
4785
4786The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4787General Public License.
4788
4789*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4790
4791 * Host/native/target split
4792
4793GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4794hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4795target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4796local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4797ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4798
4799The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4800GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4801is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4802code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4803any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4804built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4805handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4806
4807GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4808It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4809plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4810
4811 * New hosts supported
4812
4813HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4814386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4815386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4816
4817 * New targets supported
4818
4819Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
482068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4821
4822 * New native hosts supported
4823
4824386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4825 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4826386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4827
4828 * New file formats supported
4829
4830BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4831supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4832format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4833
4834 * New commands
4835
4836`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4837`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4838These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4839
4840`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4841
4842You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4843scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4844prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4845executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4846
4847 * C++ improvements
4848
4849We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4850info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4851symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4852
4853Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4854
4855 * Major bug fixes
4856
4857The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4858fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4859by the compiler.
4860
4861We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4862support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4863
4864John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4865slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4866that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4867purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4868the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4869mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4870
4871Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4872about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4873completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4874we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4875
4876 * AMD 29k support
4877
4878A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4879specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4880calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4881usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4882in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4883
4884We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4885Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4886of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4887resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4888
4889 * Remote interfaces
4890
4891We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4892with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4893message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4894This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4895needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4896breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4897each instruction being stepped through.
4898
4899The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4900registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4901
4902There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4903find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4904Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4905processor with a serial port.
4906
4907 * Configuration
4908
4909Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4910`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4911supported, and what files each one uses.
4912
4913 * Library changes
4914
4915There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4916disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4917Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4918disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4919
4920The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4921Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4922can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4923grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4924
4925 * Documentation
4926
4927The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4928reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4929as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4930encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4931system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4932bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4933
4934And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4935
4936
4937*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4938
4939 * Better support for C++ function names
4940
4941GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4942names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4943(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4944single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4945Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4946
4947GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4948the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4949You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4950lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4951for the list of formats.
4952
4953 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4954
4955Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4956C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4957directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4958can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4959usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4960about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4961this problem.)
4962
4963 * New 'maintenance' command
4964
4965All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4966the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4967can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4968
4969 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4970 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4971 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4972 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4973 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4974 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4975
4976The following commands are new:
4977
4978 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4979 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4980 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4981
4982 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4983
4984We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4985(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4986be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4987read after argv processing.
4988
4989 * New hosts supported
4990
4991Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4992
55241689 4993GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4994
4995We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4996is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4997for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4998masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4999fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5000It costs extra.
5001
5002 * New targets supported
5003
5004Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5005
5006 * More smarts about finding #include files
5007
5008GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5009all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5010greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5011especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5012the one that contains your sources.
5013
5014We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5015breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5016try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5017
5018 * Interesting infernals change
5019
5020GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5021section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5022target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5023stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5024
5025 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5026
5027There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5028 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5029 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5030
5031See the ChangeLog for details.
5032
5033*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5034
5035 * New machines supported (host and target)
5036
5037IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5038
5039SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5040
5041 * New malloc package
5042
5043GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5044Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5045capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5046This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5047pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5048more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5049
5050 * info proc
5051
5052The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5053'help info proc' for details.
5054
5055 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5056
5057The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5058Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5059possible.
5060
5061 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5062
5063Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5064support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5065conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5066environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5067that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5068in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5069
5070 * Cross byte order fixes
5071
5072Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5073targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5074
5075 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5076
5077If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5078system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5079`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5080program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5081called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5082Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5083and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5084the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5085option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5086starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5087
5088You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5089the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5090information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5091slower, but makes future operations faster.
5092
5093The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5094build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5095A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5096use is:
5097
5098 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5099
5100The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5101It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5102shared across multiple host platforms.
5103
5104 * longjmp() handling
5105
5106GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5107siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5108all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5109platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5110
5111 * Solaris 2.0
5112
5113Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5114this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5115reading symbols.
5116
5117 * Bug fixes
5118
5119As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5120People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5121crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5122
5123*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5124
5125 * New machines supported (host and target)
5126
5127SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5128 (except core files)
5129BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5130Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5131
5132 * New machines supported (target)
5133
5134AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5135
5136 * C++ support
5137
5138GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5139The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5140per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5141
5142GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5143`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5144extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5145good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5146will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5147released.
5148
5149 * New features for SVR4
5150
5151GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5152shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5153only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5154
5155The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5156on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5157it prints the address mappings of the process.
5158
5159If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5160bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5161
5162 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5163
5164Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5165now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5166skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5167make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5168same code linked statically.
5169
5170 * New Getopt
5171
5172GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5173version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5174continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5175Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5176added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5177future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5178
5179 * Bugs fixed
5180
5181The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5182Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5183See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5184
5185
5186*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5187
5188 * New machines supported (host and target)
5189
5190Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5191NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5192Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5193
5194 * Almost SCO Unix support
5195
5196We had hoped to support:
5197SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5198(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5199that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5200about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5201
5202 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5203
5204GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5205debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5206is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5207send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5208reqired (if any).
5209
5210 * New Readline
5211
5212GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5213is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5214required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5215
5216 * Bugs fixed
5217
5218The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5219Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5220See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5221
5222 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5223
5224GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5225supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5226symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5227
5228Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5229mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5230debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5231mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5232version 2.
5233
5234Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5235really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5236line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5237variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5238situation somewhat.
5239
5240When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5241However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5242methods.
5243
5244We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5245DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5246encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5247
5248
5249*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5250
5251 * Improved configuration
5252
5253Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5254Porting BFD is simpler.
5255
5256 * Stepping improved
5257
5258The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5259of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5260in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5261function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5262
5263 * Bug fixing
5264
5265Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5266
5267 * New host supported (not target)
5268
5269Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5270
5271
5272*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5273
5274 * Multiple source language support
5275
5276GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5277It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5278and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5279language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5280You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5281`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5282
5283 * GDB and Modula-2
5284
5285GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5286currently under development at the State University of New York at
5287Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5288continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5289
5290Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5291debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5292symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5293
5294There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5295in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5296
5297 * set write on/off
5298
5299GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5300a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5301the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5302by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5303effect immediately.
5304
5305 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5306
5307When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5308shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5309The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5310examining core files.
5311
5312 * set listsize
5313
5314You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5315The default is 10.
5316
5317 * New machines supported (host and target)
5318
5319SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5320Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5321Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5322
5323 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5324
5325IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5326
5327 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5328
5329AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5330AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5331Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5332
5333 * New remote interfaces
5334
5335AMD 29000 Adapt
5336AMD 29000 Minimon
5337
5338
5339*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5340
5341 * New Facilities
5342
5343Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5344
5345Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5346target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5347is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5348remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5349remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5350also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5351using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5352stub on the target system.
5353
5354New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5355
5356GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5357library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5358object file types such as a.out and coff.
5359
5360There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5361refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5362
5363
5364 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5365
5366All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5367by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5368
5369For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5370``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5371Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5372
5373What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5374print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5375will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5376all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5377
5378confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5379 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5380 it is already running. Default is ON.
5381
5382editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5383 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5384 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5385 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5386 Default is ON.
5387
5388history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5389 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5390 or the value of the environment variable
5391 GDBHISTFILE.
5392
5393history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5394 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5395 HISTSIZE.
5396
5397history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5398 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5399 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5400
5401history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5402 history expansion will be performed on
5403 command line input. The default is OFF.
5404
5405radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5406 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5407 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5408
5409height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5410 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5411 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5412 variable TERM.
5413
5414width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5415 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5416 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5417 variable TERM.
5418
5419Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5420``set width'' instead.
5421
5422print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5423 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5424 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5425 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5426
5427print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5428 is OFF.
5429
5430print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5431 "raw" form if off.
5432
5433print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5434 like instructions.
5435
5436print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5437
5438
5439 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5440
5441The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5442new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5443are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5444window.
5445
5446
5447 * Support for Shared Libraries
5448
5449GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5450Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5451before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5452happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5453At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5454from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5455shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5456It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5457
5458sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5459 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5460 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5461
5462info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5463
5464
5465 * Watchpoints
5466
5467A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5468expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5469tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5470quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5471problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5472more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5473
5474watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5475
5476info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5477
5478delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5479disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5480enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5481
5482
5483 * C++ multiple inheritance
5484
5485When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5486for C++ programs.
5487
5488 * C++ exception handling
5489
5490Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5491ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5492the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5493handler's context).
5494
5495catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5496 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5497 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5498
5499info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5500 current stack frame.
5501
5502
5503 * Minor command changes
5504
5505The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5506command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5507is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5508
5509The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5510at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5511frames without printing.
5512
5513 * New directory command
5514
5515'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5516The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5517about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5518with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5519find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5520
5521 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5522
5523For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5524for more details.
5525
5526GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5527two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5528Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5529where the program that you are debugging will run.