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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.3
5
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6* New native configurations
7
8OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
9
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10* Deprecated commands removed
11
12The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
13removed:
14
15 Command Replacement
16 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
17 othernames set arm disassembler
18 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
19 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
20 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
21 regs info registers
22
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23* New BSD user-level threads support
24
25It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
26library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
27configurations are:
28
29FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
30FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
31OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
32
33Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
34are not yet supported.
35
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36* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
37(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
38
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39* REMOVED configurations and files
40
41VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
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42Renesas H8/300S h8300*-*-*
43Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
44Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
45National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
46NEC V850 v850-*-*
156a53ca 47
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48*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
49
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50* New command line option
51
52GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
53debugging.
54
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55* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
56
57GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
58information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
59by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
60proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
61to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 62
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63* Internationalization
64
65When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
66internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
67continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
68
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69* Ada
70
71Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
72implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
73into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
74
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75* New native configurations
76
77GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
78
79* Remote 'p' packet
80
81GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
82packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
83
84* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
85
86GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
87The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
88features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
89i386 application).
90
91GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
92compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
93continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
94configurations:
95
96hppa-*-hpux
97ia64-*-aix
98mips-*-irix*
99*-*-lynx
100mips-*-linux-gnu
101sds protocol
102xdr protocol
103powerpc bdm protocol
104
105Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
106made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
107
108* OBSOLETE configurations and files
109
110Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
111been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
112configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
113permanently REMOVED.
114
115h8300-*-*
116mcore-*-*
117mn10300-*-*
118ns32k-*-*
119sh64-*-*
120v850-*-*
121
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122*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
123
124* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
125
126When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
127heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
128been fixed.
129
130* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
131
132When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
133fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
134IRIX long double values).
135
136* VAX and "next"
137
138A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
139command. This problem has been fixed.
140
860660cb 141*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 142
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143* Fix for ``many threads''
144
145On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
146rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
147error message:
148
149 ptrace: No such process.
150 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
151
152This problem has been fixed.
153
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154* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
155
156Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
157GDB to dump core).
158
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159* New ``start'' command.
160
161This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
162
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163* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
164
165Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
166live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
167platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
168
169FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
170FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
171NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
172NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
173NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
174OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
175OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
176OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
177OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
178
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179* Signal trampoline code overhauled
180
181Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
182These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
183of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
184call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
185signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
186
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187Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
188features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
189include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 190
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191* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
192
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193* New native configurations
194
97dc871c 195GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 196OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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197OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
198OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 199OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 200NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 201OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 202
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203* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
204
205GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
206The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
207including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
208migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
209compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
210work, was also included.
211
212GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
213module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
214
215h8300-*-*
216mcore-*-*
217mn10300-*-*
218ns32k-*-*
219sh64-*-*
220v850-*-*
221xstormy16-*-*
222
223Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
224made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
225
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226* REMOVED configurations and files
227
228Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
229Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
230Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
231Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
232Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
233AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
234Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
235decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
236riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
237sonymips mips-sony-*
238sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
239
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240*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
241
242* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
243
244The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
245GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
246command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
247program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
248with GDB".
249
250* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
251
252Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
253libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
254cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
255GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
256shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
257the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
258are created.
259
260Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
261
262* Fixed ISO-C build problems
263
264The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
265non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
266compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
267
268* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
269
270Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
271wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
272
273* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
274
275The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
276permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
277systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
278
279* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
280
281Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
282has been updated to use constant array sizes.
283
284* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
285
286GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
287its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
288panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
289
290* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
291
292When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
293by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
294not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
295
faae5abe 296*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 297
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298* Removed --with-mmalloc
299
300Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
301conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
302
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303* Changes in AMD64 configurations
304
305The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
306the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
307and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
308you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
309
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310* Revised SPARC target
311
312The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
313FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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314support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
315from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
316(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 317
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318* New C++ demangler
319
320GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
321names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
322with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
323programs.
324
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325* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
326
327GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
328arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
329encountered these.
330
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331* C++ nested types and namespaces
332
333GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
334improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
335is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
336Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
337namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
338"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
339frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
340if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
341GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
342
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343* New native configurations
344
345NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 346OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 347OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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348OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
349OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 350
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351* New debugging protocols
352
353M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
354
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355* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
356
357The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
358and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
359tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
360
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361* OBSOLETE configurations and files
362
363Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
364been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
365configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
366permanently REMOVED.
367
368Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
369Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
370Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
371Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
372Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
373AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
374Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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375decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
376riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
377sonymips mips-sony-*
378sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 379
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380* REMOVED configurations and files
381
382SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
383SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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384Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
385Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
386H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
387HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
388HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
389HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
390PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 391386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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392Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
393 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
394 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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395SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
396SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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397Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
398Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 399
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400*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
401
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402* Objective-C
403
404Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
405integrated into GDB.
406
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407* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
408
409DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
410information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
411By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
412backtraces.
413
414The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
415have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
416DWARF 2 CFI support.
417
418* Hosted file I/O.
419
420GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
421file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
422remote protocol documentation for details.
423
424* All targets using the new architecture framework.
425
426All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
427architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
428to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
429ppc32 on ppc64).
430
431* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
432
433GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
434per-thread variables.
435
436* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
437
438GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
439GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
440
441* Separate debug info.
442
443GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
444automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
445of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
446system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
447and optional debug files.
448
449* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
450
451DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
452describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
453debugger.
454
455GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
456for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
457
458* Java
459
460A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
461Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
462considered "useable".
463
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464* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
465
466The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
467commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
468kernel.
469
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470* GDB supports logging output to a file
471
472There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
473used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 474
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475* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
476
477The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
478disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
479command.
480
e286caf2 481* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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482
483The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
484registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
485
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486* Profiling support
487
488A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
489be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
490session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
491"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
492data, for more informative profiling results.
493
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494* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
495
496The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
497option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 498"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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499
500Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
501removed.
502
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503Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
504Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
505Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
506 in a subsequent -var-update.
507
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508* New native configurations.
509
510FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
511
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512* Multi-arched targets.
513
b4263afa 514HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 515Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 516
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517* OBSOLETE configurations and files
518
519Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
520been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
521configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
522permanently REMOVED.
523
8b0e5691 524Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 525Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 526H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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527HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
528HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
529HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 530PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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531Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
532 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
533 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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534Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
535Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 536
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537* REMOVED configurations and files
538
539V850EA ISA
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540Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
541IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
542i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
543i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
544i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
545HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
546 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
547 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
548Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
549Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
550Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
551OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
552I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 553
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554* MIPS $fp behavior changed
555
556The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
557the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
558context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
559address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
560The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
561
299ffc64 562*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 563
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564* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
565
566When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
567`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
568in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
569library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
570shared libs like mad''.
571
b9d14705 572* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 573
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574Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
575the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
576arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
577powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 578
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579* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
580
581GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
582and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
583they expand.
584
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585The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
586invocations in expression, and shows the result.
587
588The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
589macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
590
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591Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
592information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
593your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
594information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
595
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596* Multi-arched targets.
597
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598DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
599DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 600NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 601National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
602Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
603Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 604
cd9bfe15 605* New targets.
e33ce519 606
456f8b9d
DB
607Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
608
e33ce519 609
da8ca43d
JT
610* New native configurations
611
612Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 613SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 614MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 615UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 616
cd9bfe15
AC
617* OBSOLETE configurations and files
618
619Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
620been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
621configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
622permanently REMOVED.
623
92eb23c5 624Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 625OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 626IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 627Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 628Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 629Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
630i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
631i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
632i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
633HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
634 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
635 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 636I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 637
db034ac5
AC
638* OBSOLETE languages
639
640CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
641
cd9bfe15
AC
642* REMOVED configurations and files
643
644AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
645A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
646AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
647AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
648AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
649
650testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
651
20f01a46
DH
652* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
653
654This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
655commands. The default is 1024.
656
a5941fbf
MK
657* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
658
659Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
660
89743e04
MS
661* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
662
663These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
664to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
665from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 666
9fb14e79
JB
667* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
668
669The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
670including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
671of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
672
2037aebb
AC
673*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
674
675* New targets.
676
677Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
678
679* Bug fixes
680
681gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
682mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
683Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
684
685gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
686dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
687Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
688
689Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
690Surprisingly enough, it works now.
691By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
692
693i386 hardware watchpoint support:
694avoid misses on second run for some targets.
695By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
696
37057839 697*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 698
1a703748
MS
699* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
700
701This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
702really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
703In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
704target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
705This can be a significant performance improvement on some
706(notably embedded) targets.
707
cefd4ef5
MS
708* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
709
55241689
AC
710This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
711process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
712GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
713hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 714
352ed7b4
MS
715* New command line option
716
717GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
718
719* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
720
721There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
722command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
723a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
724be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
725open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
726issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
727a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
728it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
729GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
730is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
731
fe419ffc
RE
732* Changes in ARM configurations.
733
734Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
735configuration is fully multi-arch.
736
eb7cedd9
MK
737* New native configurations
738
fe419ffc 739ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 740x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 741AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 742Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 743
c9f63e6b
CV
744* New targets
745
746Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
747
9b4ff276
AC
748* OBSOLETE configurations and files
749
750Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
751been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
752configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
753permanently REMOVED.
754
755AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
756A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
757AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
758AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
759AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
760
b4ceaee6 761testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 762
e2caac18
AC
763* REMOVED configurations and files
764
765TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 766WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
767PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
768PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
769PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 770Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
771Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
772 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 773SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 774Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
775Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
776ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 777Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 778
c2a727fa
TT
779* Changes to command line processing
780
781The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
782for the inferior from gdb's command line.
783
467d8519
TT
784* Changes to key bindings
785
786There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
787
7072a954
AC
788*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
789
790Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
791
792Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
793corrupted.
794
795Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
796
797Numerous documentation fixes.
798
799Numerous testsuite fixes.
800
34f47bc4 801*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
802
803* New native configurations
804
805Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
806x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 807MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
808MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
809ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 810s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 811
bf64bfd6
AC
812* New targets
813
def90278 814Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 815CRIS cris-axis
55241689 816UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 817
17e78a56 818* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
819
820x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 821Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
822Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
823 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
824TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
825WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 826Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
827PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
828PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
829PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 830SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
831Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
832ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 833Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 834
17e78a56
AC
835stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
836kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
837
7fcca85b
AC
838Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
839been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
840configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
841permanently REMOVED.
842
a196c81c 843* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
844
845Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
846Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
847Pyramid pyramid-*-*
848ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
849Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 850ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 851
6d6b80e5 852* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 853
6d6b80e5 854GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
855sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
856present.
857
bf64bfd6
AC
858* Other news:
859
e23194cb
EZ
860* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
861
862* The MI enabled by default.
863
864The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
865revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
866engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
867using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
868which is now deprecated.
869
870* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
871
872GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
873main features are supported:
874
875 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
876
877 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
878 extension;
879
880 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
881
882 - a Pascal expression parser.
883
884However, some important features are not yet supported.
885
886 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
887
888 - there are some problems with boolean types;
889
890 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
891 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
892
893 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
894
895 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
896
897* Changes in completion.
898
899Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
900to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
901users expect at the shell prompt.
902
903Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
904`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
905program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
906files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
907be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
908considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
909name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
910
911`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
912
913* New platform-independent commands:
914
915It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
916hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
917documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
918
919* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
920
d7275149
MK
921Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
922revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
923many threads as your system allows you to have.
924
e23194cb
EZ
925Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
926
d7275149
MK
927Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
928multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
929
930* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
931
932Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
933
e23194cb
EZ
934GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
935debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
936supported.)
937
938* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
939
940Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
941breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
942implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
943put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
944and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
945registers.
946
947The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
948debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
949watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
950
951* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
952
953New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
954the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
955
956New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
957display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
958IDT.
959
960New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
961from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
962New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
963a given linear address.
964
965GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
966program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
967which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
968
969DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
970
6c56c069
EZ
971It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
972
e23194cb
EZ
973* Changes in documentation.
974
975All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
976Documentation License.
977
978Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
979manual.
980
981TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
982
983Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
984manual.
985
986The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
987documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
988hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
989
5d6640b1
AC
990* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
991
992The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
993``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
994contents of this file.
995
1a1d8446
AC
996* gdba.el deleted
997
998GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 999
9debab2f 1000*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1001
c63ce875
EZ
1002* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1003
1004Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1005programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1006displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1007greater level of detail.
1008
1009* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1010
1011It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1012bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1013on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1014written.
1015
1016* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1017
1018The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1019necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1020machines ``out of the box''.
1021
1022The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1023possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1024signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1025would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1026interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1027
1028It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1029standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1030even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1031and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1032terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1033
1034The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1035enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1036also works.
1037
1038DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1039GDB.
1040
1041It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1042directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1043times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1044breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1045
ed9a39eb
JM
1046* New native configurations
1047
1048ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1049PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1050
7a292a7a
SS
1051* New targets
1052
96baa820 1053Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1054x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1055PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1056TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1057
085dd6e6
JM
1058* OBSOLETE configurations
1059
1060Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1061Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1062Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1063ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1064Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1065
9debab2f
AC
1066Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1067but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1068these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1069be permanently REMOVED.
1070
5330533d
SS
1071* Gould support removed
1072
1073Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1074
bc9e5bbf
AC
1075* New features for SVR4
1076
1077On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1078without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1079load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1080
1081* Many C++ enhancements
1082
1083C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1084in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1085
adf40b2e
JM
1086* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1087
1088A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1089sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1090with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1091``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1092
1093 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1094 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1095
43e526b9
JM
1096* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1097
1098A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1099expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1100instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1101
1102The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1103added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1104
96baa820
JM
1105* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1106
1107The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1108``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1109include ``set remote P-packet''.
1110
11cf8741
JM
1111* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1112
1113The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1114accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1115``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1116
7876dd43
DB
1117* ``apropos'' command added.
1118
1119The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1120documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1121try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1122
bc9e5bbf
AC
1123* New MI interface
1124
1125A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1126interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1127process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1128"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1129enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1130
1131 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1132
c906108c
SS
1133*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1134
1135* New native configurations
1136
1137HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1138HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1139M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1140
1141* New targets
1142
1143Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1144Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1145Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1146
1147* OBSOLETE configurations
1148
1149Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1150
1151Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1152but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1153these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1154be permanently REMOVED.
1155
1156* ANSI/ISO C
1157
1158As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1159buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1160containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1161use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1162available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1163configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1164information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1165already.
1166
1167* Readline 2.2
1168
1169GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1170
1171* set extension-language
1172
1173You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1174languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1175you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1176 set extension-language .c c++
1177The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1178and their associated languages.
1179
1180* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1181
1182When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1183you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1184PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1185
1186 set processor NAME
1187
1188sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1189following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1190
1191 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1192 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1193 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1194 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1195 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1196 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1197 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1198 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1199 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1200 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1201 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1202
1203At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1204special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1205registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1206only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1207
1208* HP-UX support
1209
1210Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1211more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1212library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1213support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1214for xdb and dbx commands.
1215
1216* Catchpoints
1217
1218HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1219generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1220to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1221
1222This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1223argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1224output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1225
1226* Debugging across forks
1227
1228On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1229in the inferior.
1230
1231* TUI
1232
1233HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1234it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1235configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1236
1237* GDB remote protocol additions
1238
1239A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1240Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1241fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1242allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1243
1244For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1245full 64-bit address. The command
1246
1247 set remoteaddresssize 32
1248
1249can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1250the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1251will be discarded.
1252
1253In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1254command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1255
1256 maint packet heythere
1257
1258sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1259disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1260time.
1261
1262The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1263target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1264downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1265
1266* Tracing can collect general expressions
1267
1268You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1269further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1270doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1271
1272* mask-address variable for Mips
1273
1274For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1275a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1276of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1277
1278* Higher serial baud rates
1279
1280GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1281230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1282to achieve all of these rates.)
1283
1284* i960 simulator
1285
1286The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1287builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1288
1289
1290*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1291
1292* New native configurations
1293
1294Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1295Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1296Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1297PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1298PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1299Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1300Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1301
1302* New targets
1303
1304Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1305Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1306Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1307Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1308MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1309MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1310MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1311Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1312Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1313Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1314NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1315
1316* New debugging protocols
1317
1318ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1319M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1320DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1321PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1322PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1323Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1324
1325* DWARF 2
1326
1327All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1328format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1329information.
1330
1331* Java frontend
1332
1333GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1334only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1335
1336* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1337
1338For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1339loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1340locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1341
1342* Live range splitting
1343
1344GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1345range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1346more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1347
1348* Hurd support
1349
1350GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1351updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1352
1353* ARM Thumb support
1354
1355GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1356instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1357instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1358accordingly.
1359
1360* MIPS16 support
1361
1362GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1363instruction set.
1364
1365* Overlay support
1366
1367GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1368linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1369will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1370control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1371additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1372in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1373
1374* info symbol
1375
1376The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1377the symbol at the specified address.
1378
1379* Trace support
1380
1381The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1382asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1383extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1384includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1385file tracepoint.c for more details.
1386
1387* MIPS simulator
1388
1389Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1390by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1391of most MIPS variants.
1392
1393* Sparc simulator
1394
1395Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1396by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1397Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1398
1399* set architecture
1400
1401For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1402basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1403architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1404the possible architectures.
1405
1406*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1407
1408* New native configurations
1409
1410Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1411M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1412PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1413PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1414PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1415RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1416
1417* New targets
1418
1419ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1420I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1421MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1422MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1423PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1424Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1425Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1426
1427* PowerPC simulator
1428
1429The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1430contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1431PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1432basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1433performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1434
1435* Solaris 2.5
1436
1437GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1438
1439* Windows 95/NT native
1440
1441GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1442To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1443which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1444Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1445ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1446
1447* dont-repeat command
1448
1449If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1450command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1451useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1452extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1453
1454* Send break instead of ^C
1455
1456The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1457rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1458GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1459
1460* Remote protocol timeout
1461
1462The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1463that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1464to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1465
1466* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1467
1468By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1469loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1470stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1471when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1472in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1473
1474Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1475/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1476automatically on hpux10.
1477
1478* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1479
1480Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1481
1482* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1483
1484When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1485may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1486the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1487every character. The default value is 1050.
1488
1489* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1490
1491If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1492a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1493replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1494details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1495remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1496to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1497
1498* Speedups for remote debugging
1499
1500GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1501the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1502and more efficient S-record downloading.
1503
1504* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1505
1506GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1507Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1508
1509*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1510
1511* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1512
1513The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1514can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1515
1516* Remote targets use caching
1517
1518Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1519remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1520it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1521debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1522off' turns the the data cache off.
1523
1524* Remote targets may have threads
1525
1526The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1527in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1528gdb/remote.c for details.
1529
1530* NetROM support
1531
1532If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1533support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1534acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1535write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1536support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1537another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1538sequence is something like
1539
1540 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1541 load <prog>
1542 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1543
1544* Macintosh host
1545
1546GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1547may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1548it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1549available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1550device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1551directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1552scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1553mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1554
1555* Autoconf
1556
1557GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1558but does simplify configuration and building.
1559
1560* hpux10
1561
1562GDB now supports hpux10.
1563
1564*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1565
1566* New native configurations
1567
1568x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1569x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1570NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1571Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1572
1573* New targets
1574
1575A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1576HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1577CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1578PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1579WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1580
1581* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1582
1583GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1584possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1585filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1586the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1587if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1588
1589* Arguments to user-defined commands
1590
1591User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1592Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1593trivial example:
1594define adder
1595 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1596
1597To execute the command use:
1598adder 1 2 3
1599
1600Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1601Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1602use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1603
1604* New `if' and `while' commands
1605
1606This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1607commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1608expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1609execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1610terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1611`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1612if the expression is zero.
1613
1614* Fortran source language mode
1615
1616GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1617Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1618variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1619with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1620Fortran compilers.
1621
1622* Better HPUX support
1623
1624Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1625running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1626processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1627for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1628that behavior do the following before running the program:
1629
1630 adb -w a.out
1631 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1632 control-d
1633
1634This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1635To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1636
1637 adb -w a.out
1638 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1639 control-d
1640
1641You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1642the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1643external linkage.
1644
1645GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1646HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1647
1648* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1649
1650You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1651commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1652current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1653"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1654associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1655configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1656
1657* New DOS host serial code
1658
1659This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1660no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1661a PC's serial port.
1662
1663*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1664
1665* New "complete" command
1666
1667This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1668were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1669
1670* Trailing space optional in prompt
1671
1672"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1673allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1674
1675* Breakpoint hit counts
1676
1677"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1678has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1679can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1680to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1681less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1682that breakpoint.
1683
1684* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1685
1686"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1687an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1688arrays actually contain only short strings.
1689
1690* Shared library breakpoints
1691
1692In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1693breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1694
1695* Hardware watchpoints
1696
1697There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1698targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1699
55241689 1700Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1701
1702* Annotations
1703
1704Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1705and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1706
1707* Improved Irix 5 support
1708
1709GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1710
1711* Improved HPPA support
1712
1713GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1714
1715* New native configurations
1716
1717Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1718HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1719Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1720RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1721
1722* New targets
1723
1724OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1725MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1726Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1727
1728* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1729
1730There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1731This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1732
1733* Fixes
1734
1735As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1736and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1737
1738*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1739
1740* Irix 5 is now supported
1741
1742* HPPA support
1743
1744GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1745to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1746GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1747of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1748can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1749
1750
1751*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1752
1753* User visible changes:
1754
1755* Remote Debugging
1756
1757The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1758target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1759debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1760integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1761debugging info for the mips target).
1762
1763* DEC Alpha native support
1764
1765GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1766debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1767work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1768Alpha-specific notes.
1769
1770* Preliminary thread implementation
1771
1772GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1773
1774* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1775
1776This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1777to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1778for details).
1779
1780* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1781
1782This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1783mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1784call methods, ...etc.
1785
1786*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1787
1788 * User visible changes:
1789
1790Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1791supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1792other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1793somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1794
1795Filename completion now works.
1796
1797When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1798arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1799addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1800
1801All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1802vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1803should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1804your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1805to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1806
1807 * DEC alpha support
1808
1809This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1810cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1811
1812
1813*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1814
1815 * Testsuite
1816
1817This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1818The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1819via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1820
1821 * C++ demangling
1822
1823'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1824emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1825Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1826disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1827use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1828
1829 * Simulators
1830
1831GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1832So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1833Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1834
1835 * New targets supported
1836
1837H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1838H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1839SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1840Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1841IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1842
1843Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1844version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1845GO32 memory extender.
1846
1847 * New remote protocols
1848
1849MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1850
1851 * New source languages supported
1852
1853This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1854used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1855into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1856
1857
1858*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1859
1860 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1861
1862GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1863version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1864University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1865compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1866format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1867(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1868
1869Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1870
1871 * Faster and better demangling
1872
1873We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1874demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1875character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1876only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1877This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1878increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1879symbol lookups.
1880
1881`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1882from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1883compiler does not actually implement.
1884
1885 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1886
1887In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1888inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1889recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1890very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1891The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1892circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1893fix.
1894
1895The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1896release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1897
1898 * Improved configure script
1899
1900The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1901you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1902host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1903done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1904
1905We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1906version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1907`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1908The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1909only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1910We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1911
1912 * Documentation improvements
1913
1914There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1915produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1916before submitting changes.
1917
1918The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1919M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1920`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1921you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1922a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1923
1924*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1925We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1926been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1927or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1928`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1929around this problem.
1930
1931 * New features
1932
1933GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1934the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1935`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1936the target program.
1937
1938The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1939how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1940
1941 * New native hosts supported
1942
1943HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1944386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1945
1946 * New targets supported
1947
1948AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1949
1950 * New file formats supported
1951
1952BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1953HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1954
1955 * Major bug fixes
1956
1957Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1958
1959We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1960printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1961
1962We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1963for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1964release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1965
1966You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1967will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1968
1969We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1970for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1971especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1972libraries.
1973
1974The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1975information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1976command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1977any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1978when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1979
1980 * Internal improvements
1981
1982GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1983debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1984
1985GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1986Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1987symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1988contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1989shared code that handles any of them.
1990
1991 * New command line options
1992
1993We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1994
1995 * Mmalloc licensing
1996
1997The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1998General Public License.
1999
2000*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2001
2002 * Host/native/target split
2003
2004GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2005hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2006target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2007local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2008ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2009
2010The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2011GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2012is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2013code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2014any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2015built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2016handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2017
2018GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2019It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2020plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2021
2022 * New hosts supported
2023
2024HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2025386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2026386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2027
2028 * New targets supported
2029
2030Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
203168030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2032
2033 * New native hosts supported
2034
2035386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2036 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2037386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2038
2039 * New file formats supported
2040
2041BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2042supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2043format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2044
2045 * New commands
2046
2047`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2048`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2049These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2050
2051`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2052
2053You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2054scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2055prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2056executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2057
2058 * C++ improvements
2059
2060We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2061info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2062symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2063
2064Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2065
2066 * Major bug fixes
2067
2068The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2069fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2070by the compiler.
2071
2072We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2073support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2074
2075John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2076slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2077that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2078purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2079the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2080mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2081
2082Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2083about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2084completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2085we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2086
2087 * AMD 29k support
2088
2089A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2090specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2091calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2092usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2093in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2094
2095We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2096Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2097of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2098resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2099
2100 * Remote interfaces
2101
2102We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2103with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2104message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2105This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2106needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2107breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2108each instruction being stepped through.
2109
2110The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2111registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2112
2113There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2114find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2115Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2116processor with a serial port.
2117
2118 * Configuration
2119
2120Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2121`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2122supported, and what files each one uses.
2123
2124 * Library changes
2125
2126There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2127disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2128Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2129disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2130
2131The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2132Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2133can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2134grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2135
2136 * Documentation
2137
2138The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2139reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2140as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2141encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2142system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2143bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2144
2145And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2146
2147
2148*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2149
2150 * Better support for C++ function names
2151
2152GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2153names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2154(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2155single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2156Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2157
2158GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2159the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2160You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2161lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2162for the list of formats.
2163
2164 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2165
2166Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2167C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2168directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2169can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2170usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2171about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2172this problem.)
2173
2174 * New 'maintenance' command
2175
2176All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2177the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2178can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2179
2180 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2181 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2182 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2183 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2184 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2185 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2186
2187The following commands are new:
2188
2189 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2190 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2191 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2192
2193 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2194
2195We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2196(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2197be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2198read after argv processing.
2199
2200 * New hosts supported
2201
2202Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2203
55241689 2204GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2205
2206We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2207is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2208for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2209masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2210fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2211It costs extra.
2212
2213 * New targets supported
2214
2215Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2216
2217 * More smarts about finding #include files
2218
2219GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2220all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2221greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2222especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2223the one that contains your sources.
2224
2225We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2226breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2227try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2228
2229 * Interesting infernals change
2230
2231GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2232section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2233target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2234stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2235
2236 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2237
2238There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2239 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2240 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2241
2242See the ChangeLog for details.
2243
2244*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2245
2246 * New machines supported (host and target)
2247
2248IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2249
2250SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2251
2252 * New malloc package
2253
2254GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2255Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2256capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2257This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2258pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2259more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2260
2261 * info proc
2262
2263The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2264'help info proc' for details.
2265
2266 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2267
2268The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2269Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2270possible.
2271
2272 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2273
2274Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2275support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2276conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2277environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2278that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2279in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2280
2281 * Cross byte order fixes
2282
2283Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2284targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2285
2286 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2287
2288If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2289system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2290`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2291program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2292called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2293Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2294and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2295the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2296option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2297starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2298
2299You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2300the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2301information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2302slower, but makes future operations faster.
2303
2304The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2305build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2306A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2307use is:
2308
2309 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2310
2311The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2312It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2313shared across multiple host platforms.
2314
2315 * longjmp() handling
2316
2317GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2318siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2319all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2320platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2321
2322 * Solaris 2.0
2323
2324Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2325this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2326reading symbols.
2327
2328 * Bug fixes
2329
2330As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2331People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2332crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2333
2334*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2335
2336 * New machines supported (host and target)
2337
2338SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2339 (except core files)
2340BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2341Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2342
2343 * New machines supported (target)
2344
2345AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2346
2347 * C++ support
2348
2349GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2350The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2351per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2352
2353GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2354`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2355extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2356good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2357will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2358released.
2359
2360 * New features for SVR4
2361
2362GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2363shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2364only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2365
2366The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2367on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2368it prints the address mappings of the process.
2369
2370If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2371bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2372
2373 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2374
2375Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2376now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2377skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2378make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2379same code linked statically.
2380
2381 * New Getopt
2382
2383GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2384version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2385continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2386Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2387added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2388future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2389
2390 * Bugs fixed
2391
2392The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2393Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2394See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2395
2396
2397*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2398
2399 * New machines supported (host and target)
2400
2401Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2402NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2403Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2404
2405 * Almost SCO Unix support
2406
2407We had hoped to support:
2408SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2409(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2410that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2411about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2412
2413 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2414
2415GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2416debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2417is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2418send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2419reqired (if any).
2420
2421 * New Readline
2422
2423GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2424is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2425required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2426
2427 * Bugs fixed
2428
2429The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2430Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2431See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2432
2433 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2434
2435GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2436supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2437symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2438
2439Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2440mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2441debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2442mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2443version 2.
2444
2445Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2446really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2447line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2448variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2449situation somewhat.
2450
2451When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2452However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2453methods.
2454
2455We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2456DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2457encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2458
2459
2460*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2461
2462 * Improved configuration
2463
2464Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2465Porting BFD is simpler.
2466
2467 * Stepping improved
2468
2469The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2470of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2471in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2472function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2473
2474 * Bug fixing
2475
2476Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2477
2478 * New host supported (not target)
2479
2480Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2481
2482
2483*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2484
2485 * Multiple source language support
2486
2487GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2488It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2489and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2490language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2491You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2492`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2493
2494 * GDB and Modula-2
2495
2496GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2497currently under development at the State University of New York at
2498Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2499continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2500
2501Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2502debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2503symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2504
2505There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2506in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2507
2508 * set write on/off
2509
2510GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2511a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2512the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2513by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2514effect immediately.
2515
2516 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2517
2518When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2519shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2520The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2521examining core files.
2522
2523 * set listsize
2524
2525You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2526The default is 10.
2527
2528 * New machines supported (host and target)
2529
2530SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2531Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2532Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2533
2534 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2535
2536IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2537
2538 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2539
2540AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2541AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2542Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2543
2544 * New remote interfaces
2545
2546AMD 29000 Adapt
2547AMD 29000 Minimon
2548
2549
2550*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2551
2552 * New Facilities
2553
2554Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2555
2556Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2557target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2558is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2559remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2560remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2561also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2562using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2563stub on the target system.
2564
2565New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2566
2567GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2568library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2569object file types such as a.out and coff.
2570
2571There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2572refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2573
2574
2575 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2576
2577All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2578by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2579
2580For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2581``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2582Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2583
2584What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2585print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2586will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2587all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2588
2589confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2590 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2591 it is already running. Default is ON.
2592
2593editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2594 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2595 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2596 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2597 Default is ON.
2598
2599history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2600 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2601 or the value of the environment variable
2602 GDBHISTFILE.
2603
2604history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2605 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2606 HISTSIZE.
2607
2608history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2609 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2610 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2611
2612history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2613 history expansion will be performed on
2614 command line input. The default is OFF.
2615
2616radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2617 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2618 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2619
2620height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2621 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2622 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2623 variable TERM.
2624
2625width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2626 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2627 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2628 variable TERM.
2629
2630Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2631``set width'' instead.
2632
2633print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2634 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2635 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2636 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2637
2638print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2639 is OFF.
2640
2641print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2642 "raw" form if off.
2643
2644print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2645 like instructions.
2646
2647print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2648
2649
2650 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2651
2652The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2653new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2654are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2655window.
2656
2657
2658 * Support for Shared Libraries
2659
2660GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2661Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2662before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2663happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2664At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2665from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2666shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2667It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2668
2669sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2670 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2671 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2672
2673info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2674
2675
2676 * Watchpoints
2677
2678A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2679expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2680tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2681quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2682problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2683more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2684
2685watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2686
2687info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2688
2689delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2690disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2691enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2692
2693
2694 * C++ multiple inheritance
2695
2696When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2697for C++ programs.
2698
2699 * C++ exception handling
2700
2701Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2702ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2703the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2704handler's context).
2705
2706catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2707 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2708 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2709
2710info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2711 current stack frame.
2712
2713
2714 * Minor command changes
2715
2716The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2717command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2718is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2719
2720The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2721at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2722frames without printing.
2723
2724 * New directory command
2725
2726'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2727The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2728about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2729with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2730find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2731
2732 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2733
2734For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2735for more details.
2736
2737GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2738two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2739Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2740where the program that you are debugging will run.