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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.9
5
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6* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
7 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
8 and may include things like its command line arguments.
9
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10* Python Scripting
11
12 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
13 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
14 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
15
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16* New commands
17
18maint print symbol-cache
19 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
20
21maint print symbol-cache-statistics
22 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
23
24maint flush-symbol-cache
25 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
26
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27record btrace bts
28record bts
29 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
30
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31* New options
32
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33set max-completions
34show max-completions
35 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
36 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
37 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
38 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
39
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40maint set symbol-cache-size
41maint show symbol-cache-size
42 Control the size of the symbol cache.
43
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44set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
45 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
46 BTS format.
47 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
48 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
49
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50* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
51 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
52
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53* Python/Guile scripting
54
55 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
56 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
57
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58* New remote packets
59
60qXfer:btrace-conf:read
61 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
62
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63Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
64 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
65
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66swbreak stop reason
67 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
68 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
69 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
70 mode operation.
71
72hwbreak stop reason
73 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
74 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
75
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76vFile:fstat:
77 Return information about files on the remote system.
78
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79* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
80 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
81 the btrace record target.
82 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
83
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84* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
85 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
86
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87* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
88 targets.
89
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90* Removed targets and native configurations
91
92HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
93Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
94
3b2f13ff 95*** Changes in GDB 7.9
919b9a93 96
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97* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
98
5f3b99cf 99* Python Scripting
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100
101 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
102 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
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103 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
104 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
a0be3e44 105 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
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106 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
107 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
86e4ed39 108 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
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109 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
110 selecting a new file to debug.
02be9a71 111 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
6dddd6a5 112 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
5f3b99cf 113
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114 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
115 inferior.
116
117 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
118 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
119 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
120 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
121
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122* New Python-based convenience functions:
123
124 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
125 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
126 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
127 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
128
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129* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
130 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
131 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
132 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
133 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
134 interface with this new feature are:
135
136 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
137 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
138
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139* New commands
140
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141demangle [-l language] [--] name
142 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
143 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
144 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
145 as "maint demangler-warning".
146
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147queue-signal signal-name-or-number
148 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
149
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150add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
151 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
152 scripts.
153
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154maint print user-registers
155 List all currently available "user" registers.
156
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157compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
158 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
159 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
160
161compile file [-r|-raw] filename
162 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
163 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
164 provided.
165
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166* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
167 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
168 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
169 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
170 at resume time.
171
172* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
173 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
174 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
175 switched threads meanwhile.
176
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177* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
178
179 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
180 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
181 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
182 is now the default mode.
183
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184* New options
185
186set debug symbol-lookup
187show debug symbol-lookup
188 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
189
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190* MI changes
191
192 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
193 inferiors that have exited.
194
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195* New targets
196
197MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
198
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199* Removed targets
200
201Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
202
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203Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
204SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
205SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
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206VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
207VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
3831839c 208
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209* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
210 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
211 its alias "share", instead.
212
919b9a93 213*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 214
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215* New command line options
216
217-D data-directory
218 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
219
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220* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
221 as specified in ISO C99.
222
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223* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
224 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 225
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226* Guile scripting
227
228 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
229 available is determined at configure time.
230 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
231 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
232
233* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
234
235guile [code]
236gu [code]
237 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
238
239guile-repl
240gr
241 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
242
243info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
244 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
245
246* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
247 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
248
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249* New options
250
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251set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
252show print symbol-loading
253 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
254 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
255 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
256 becomes less useful.
257
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258set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
259show guile print-stack
260 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
261
262set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
263show auto-load guile-scripts
264 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
265
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266maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
267maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
268 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
269 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
270 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
271 usage of this option.
272
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273set auto-connect-native-target
274
275 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
276 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
277 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
278
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279set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
280show record btrace replay-memory-access
281 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
282
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283maint set target-async (on|off)
284maint show target-async
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285 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
286 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
329ea579 287 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
5784b3ca 288 occurring only in synchronous mode.
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289
290set mi-async (on|off)
291show mi-async
292 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
293 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
294
295* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
296 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
297
298* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
299 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
300 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
301 "set target-async on" command.
302
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303* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
304
305 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
306 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
307 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
308 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
309 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
310
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311* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
312 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
313 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
314
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315* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
316 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
317 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
318 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
319 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
320 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
321 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
322
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323* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
324 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
325
066ce621 326* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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327 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
328 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 329
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330* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
331 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
332 memory or registers.
333
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334* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
335
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336* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
337 remote. It now works with all targets.
338
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339* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
340 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
341 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
342 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
343 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
344 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
345 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
346 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
347 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
348 target-stack".
349
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350* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
351 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
352 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
353
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354* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
355
356* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
357 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
358 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
359
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360* New remote packets
361
362qXfer:btrace:read's annex
363 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
364 branch trace incrementally.
365
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366* Python Scripting
367
368 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
369 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
370 available.
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371 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
372 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
373 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
374 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
375 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 376
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377* New targets
378PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
379
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380* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
381 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
382 its alias "share", instead.
383
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384* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
385 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
386 instead.
387
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388* MI changes
389
390 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
391 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
392 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
393 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
394 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
395 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
396 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
397 commands and CLI execution commands.
398
b7bba001 399*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 400
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401* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
402 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
403 recording has been added.
404
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405* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
406
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407* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
408 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
409
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410* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
411 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
412 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
413 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
414 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
415 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
416 "void".
417
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418* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
419
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420* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
421
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422* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
423 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
424 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
425 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
426
427 (gdb) p $rax
428 $1 = <not saved>
429
430 (gdb) info registers rax
431 rax <not saved>
432
433 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
434 "*value not available*".
435
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436* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
437 to binaries.
438
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439* Python scripting
440
441 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 442 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 443 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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444 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
445 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 446 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 447
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448* New targets
449
450Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
451Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 452Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 453
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454* Removed native configurations
455
456Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
457been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
458
459arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
460i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
461i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
462i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
463m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
464sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
465vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
466
bd712aed 467* New commands:
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468catch rethrow
469 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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470maint check-psymtabs
471 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
472maint check-symtabs
473 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
474maint expand-symtabs
475 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 476
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477show configuration
478 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
479
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480maint set|show per-command
481maint set|show per-command space
482maint set|show per-command time
483maint set|show per-command symtab
484 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
485
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486remove-symbol-file FILENAME
487remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
488 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
489 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
490 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
491
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492info exceptions
493info exceptions REGEXP
494 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
495 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
496 are listed.
497
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498* New options
499
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500set debug symfile off|on
501show debug symfile
502 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
503 symbol tables within those files
504
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505set print raw frame-arguments
506show print raw frame-arguments
507 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
508 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
509
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510set remote trace-status-packet
511show remote trace-status-packet
512 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
513
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514set debug nios2
515show debug nios2
516 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
517
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518set range-stepping
519show range-stepping
520 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
521
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522set startup-with-shell
523show startup-with-shell
524 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
525 directly.
526
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527set code-cache
528show code-cache
529 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
530 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
531
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532* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
533 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
534 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
535 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
536 "set height 0".
537
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538* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
539 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
540 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
541
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542* New command-line options
543--configuration
544 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
545
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546* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
547 buffer in Common Trace Format.
548
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549* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
550 GDB command gcore.
551
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552* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
553
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554* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
555 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
556
557* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
558 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
559
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560* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
561 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
562 due to an uncaught signal.
563
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564* MI changes
565
403cb6b1 566 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
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567 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
568 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 569
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570 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
571 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
572
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573 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
574 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
575 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
576 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
577 "undefined-command-error-code".
578
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579 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
580 Trace Format now.
581
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582 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
583
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584 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
585 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
586 are displayed.
587
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588 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
589 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
590
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591 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
592 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
593 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
594
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595 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
596 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
597 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
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598 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
599 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
600 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 601
40555925
JB
602 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
603 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
604
58d06528
JB
605 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
606 the new "info exceptions" command.
607
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JB
608* New system-wide configuration scripts
609 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
610 configuration scripts for the following systems:
611 ** ElinOS
612 ** Wind River Linux
613
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PA
614* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
615 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
616 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
617 below.
618
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YQ
619* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
620 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
621
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UW
622* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
623 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
624 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
625
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PA
626* New remote packets
627
628vCont;r
629
630 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
631 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
632 involvemement at each single-step.
633
7f91dbec
GB
634qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
635 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
636 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
637 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
638 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
639 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
640 speedup.
641
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PA
642* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
643
644 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
645 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
646
28a93511
YQ
647 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
648 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
649 trace state variables.
650
7a60ad40
YQ
651 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
652 target.
653
6fbe845e
AB
654* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
655 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
656
9058cc3a
TG
657* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
658
0d12017b
JB
659* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
660 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
661 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
662 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
663
2d450646 664*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 665
59ea5688
MM
666* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
667 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
668 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
669 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
670
671set|show record full insn-number-max
672set|show record full stop-at-limit
673set|show record full memory-query
674
675* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
676 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
677 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
678 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
679 This new recording method can be enabled using:
680
681record btrace
682
683 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
684 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
685
686* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
687 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
688 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
689
690record instruction-history prints the execution history at
691 instruction granularity
692
693record function-call-history prints the execution history at
694 function granularity
695
543bf33d
AT
696* New native configurations
697
51d66578 698ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 699FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 700x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 701Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 702
249729c4
JB
703* New targets
704
51d66578
MS
705ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
706ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 707Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 708x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 709Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 710
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DE
711* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
712 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
713 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
714 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
715 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
716 --data-directory command-line option.
717
07540c15
DE
718* New command line options:
719
720-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
721 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
722
e93a8774
TT
723* Removed command line options
724
725-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
726 Emacs.
727
53342f27
TT
728* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
729 type formatting.
730
451b7c33
TT
731* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
732
a72c3253
DE
733* Python scripting
734
735 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
736
d7de8e3c
TT
737 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
738
18a9fc12
TT
739 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
740
9a27f2c6
PK
741 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
742
bea883fd
SCR
743 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
744 of architecture in the Python API.
745
746 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
747 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
748
a72c3253
DE
749* New Python-based convenience functions:
750
751 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
752 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
753 ** $_strlen(str)
754 ** $_regex(str, regex)
755
f3c8a52a
JK
756* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
757 given an argument.
758
1605ef26
TT
759* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
760 default for GCC since November 2000.
761
504b36fd
YQ
762* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
763
f2a8bc8a
YQ
764* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
765 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
766
23a80689
JB
767* New configure options
768
769--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
770 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
771 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
772 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
773 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
774 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
775--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
776 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
777 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 778
d6b28940
TT
779* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
780
ab04a2af
TT
781catch signal
782 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
783 conditions to be attached.
784
d6b28940
TT
785maint info bfds
786 List the BFDs known to GDB.
787
8315665e
YPK
788python-interactive [command]
789pi [command]
790 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
791 and print the result of expressions.
792
793py [command]
794 "py" is a new alias for "python".
795
18a9fc12
TT
796enable type-printer [name]...
797disable type-printer [name]...
798 Enable or disable type printers.
799
aa9259cc
TS
800* Removed commands
801
802 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
803 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
804 instead.
805
53342f27
TT
806* New options
807
808set print type methods (on|off)
809show print type methods
810 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
811 The default is to show them.
812
813set print type typedefs (on|off)
814show print type typedefs
815 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
816 The default is to show them.
817
1b56eb55
JK
818set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
819show filename-display
820 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
821 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
822
e9f1758d
PA
823set trace-buffer-size
824show trace-buffer-size
825 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
826
a46c1e42
PA
827set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
828show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
829 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
830
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PA
831set debug aarch64
832show debug aarch64
833 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
834 The default is off.
835
836set debug coff-pe-read
837show debug coff-pe-read
838 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
839 exported symbols.
840
841set debug mach-o
842show debug mach-o
843 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
844 processing.
845
846set debug notification
847show debug notification
848 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
849
5b9afe8a
YQ
850* MI changes
851
852 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
853 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
854 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
855 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
856 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
857 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
858 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
859 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
860 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
861 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
862 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 863 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 864 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
865 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
866 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
867 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
868 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
869 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
870 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
871 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
872 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
873 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
874 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
875 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
876 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 877
608e2dbb
TT
878* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
879 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
880 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
881 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
882
f6f899bf
HAQ
883* New remote packets
884
885QTBuffer:size
886 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
887 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
888
10782d74
MM
889Qbtrace:bts
890 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
891 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
892 qSupported query.
893
894Qbtrace:off
895 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
896 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
897
898qXfer:btrace:read
899 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
900 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
901
80c8d323 902*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 903
1b3371b1
L
904* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
905 for more x32 ABI info.
906
d0e64392
MR
907* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
908
4cc0665f
MR
909* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
910
85d4a676
SS
911* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
912 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
913 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
914 "info os files" lists file descriptors
915 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
916 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
917 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
918 "info os msg" lists message queues
919 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
920
55aa24fb
SDJ
921* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
922 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
923 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
924 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
925 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
926 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
927
72508ac0
PO
928* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
929 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
930 record/replay support.
931
16899756
DE
932* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
933
4795f398
DE
934* Python scripting
935
7d74f244
DE
936 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
937 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
938
4795f398
DE
939 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
940
50897289
TT
941 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
942 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
943
64e7d9dd
TT
944 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
945
946 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
947 the source at which the symbol was defined.
948
f0823d2c
TT
949 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
950 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
951 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
952 symbol's value.
953
7b282c5a
SCR
954 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
955 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
956
a20ee7a4
SCR
957 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
958 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
959 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
960
7efc75aa
SCR
961 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
962 object associated with a PC value.
963
ee0bf529
SCR
964 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
965 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
966
a766d390
DE
967* Go language support.
968 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
969 language.
970
e0f9f062
DE
971* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
972 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
973
217bff3e
JK
974* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
975 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
976
cafec441
TT
977* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
978 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
979 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
980 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
981 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
982 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
983
4aac40c8
TT
984* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
985 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
986 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
987 build/libcpp/expr.c.
988
d99bd577
UW
989* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
990 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
991
53fe1783
GB
992* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
993 since December 2007.
994
e41eec66
JB
995* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
996 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
997 command does. For instance:
998
999 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1000
1001 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1002 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1003 created, using the "condition" command.
1004
5808517f
YQ
1005* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1006 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1007
481860b3
GB
1008* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1009
1010* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1011 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1012 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
1013 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1014 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1015 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1016 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1017 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 1018
156942c7
DE
1019 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1020 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1021 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1022 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1023 the .gdb_index section.
1024
927fbba6
JB
1025* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1026
20388dd6
YQ
1027* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1028 target.
1029
f3e0e960
SS
1030* MI changes
1031
1032 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1033
37ce89eb
SS
1034 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1035
edcc5120
TT
1036* New commands
1037
e615022a
DE
1038 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1039 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1040 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1041
edcc5120
TT
1042 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1043 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1044
816338b5
SS
1045 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1046 several hits.
1047
57651221 1048 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
1049 C++ and Java objects.
1050
06fc020f 1051 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 1052 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
1053 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1054 configured with '--with-python'.
1055
bf88dd68
JK
1056 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1057 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1058 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1059 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1060 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1061 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1062 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1063
1064 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1065 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1066 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1067 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1068
e7e0cddf
SS
1069 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1070 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1071 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1072 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1073
9cb709b6
TT
1074 ** "set print symbol"
1075 "show print symbol"
1076 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1077 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1078 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1079
2d4c29c5
TS
1080* Deprecated commands
1081
1082 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1083 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1084
a58b110a
KB
1085* New targets
1086
1087Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 1088HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 1089
72895ff6
LM
1090* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1091 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1092 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1093 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1094 evaluates to true.
1095
1096* New options
1097
4cc0665f
MR
1098set mips compression
1099show mips compression
1100 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1101 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1102 mips16
1103 micromips
1104 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1105
72895ff6
LM
1106set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1107show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 1108 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
1109 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1110 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
1111 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1112 target.
1113
bf88dd68
JK
1114set auto-load off
1115 Disable auto-loading globally.
1116
1117show auto-load
1118 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1119
1120set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1121show auto-load gdb-scripts
1122 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1123
1124set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1125show auto-load python-scripts
1126 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1127
1128set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1129show auto-load local-gdbinit
1130 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1131
1132set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1133show auto-load libthread-db
1134 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1135
7349ff92 1136set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 1137show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
1138 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1139 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1140 of the directories listed by this option.
1141 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1142
bccbefd2
JK
1143set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1144show auto-load safe-path
1145 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1146 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1147
4dc84fd1
JK
1148set debug auto-load on|off
1149show debug auto-load
1150 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1151
d3ce09f5 1152set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 1153show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
1154 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1155 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1156 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1157 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
1158
1159set dprintf-function <expr>
1160show dprintf-function
1161set dprintf-channel <expr>
1162show dprintf-channel
1163 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1164 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1165
d3ce09f5
SS
1166set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1167show disconnected-dprintf
1168 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1169 after GDB disconnects.
1170
6dea1fbd
JK
1171* New configure options
1172
7349ff92
JK
1173--with-auto-load-dir
1174 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
1175 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1176 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1177 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1178 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 1179
6dea1fbd
JK
1180--with-auto-load-safe-path
1181 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1182 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1183
1184--without-auto-load-safe-path
1185 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1186 security feature.
1187
72895ff6
LM
1188* New remote packets
1189
74c48cbb
PA
1190z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1191
72895ff6
LM
1192 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1193 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1194 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1195 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1196
9b224c5e
PA
1197QProgramSignals:
1198
1199 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1200 program without GDB involvement.
1201
8320cc4f
JK
1202* New command line options
1203
1204--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1205 before loading inferior.
1206--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1207 execute it before loading inferior.
1208
8837a20f
JB
1209*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1210
f8eba3c6
TT
1211* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1212 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1213 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1214 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1215 inferior changes.
1216
1bfeeb0f
JL
1217* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1218 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1219
480a3f21
PW
1220* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1221 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1222 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1223 target hardware watchpoint.
1224
1225 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1226 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1227 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1228 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1229
3a7bf607
PM
1230* Python scripting
1231
32d1c362 1232 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1233 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1234 existing one.
1235
3a7bf607 1236 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1237 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1238 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1239 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1240 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1241 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1242
baacfb07 1243 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1244 Python API.
713389e0 1245
fa3a4f15
PM
1246 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1247 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1248 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1249 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1250 corresponding value.
1251
5e239b84
PM
1252 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1253 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1254 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1255 on GDB start-up.
1256
9df2fbc4
PM
1257 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1258 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1259 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1260 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1261
457e09f0
DE
1262 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1263
6839b47f
KP
1264 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1265 "gdb.breakpoints".
1266
cc72b2a2
KP
1267 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1268 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1269 available in the CLI.
1270
84ad80e6
PK
1271 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1272 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1273 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1274 "some_type.items()".
1275
20c168b5
KP
1276 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1277 new object file.
1278
03c3051a
PK
1279 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1280 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1281 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1282 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1283 any anonymous fields.
1284
7376e450
TT
1285* MI changes
1286
1287 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1288 "solib-event".
1289
1290 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1291 "=breakpoint-modified".
1292
1293 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1294
98a5dd13
DE
1295* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1296 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1297 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1298 lives.
1299
1300 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1301 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1302 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1303 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1304 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1305
1306 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1307 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1308
478aac75
DE
1309* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1310 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1311 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1312 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1313 use this option to specify where to find it.
1314
9c06b0b4
TJB
1315* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1316 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1317 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1318 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1319 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1320 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1321 section in the user manual for more details.
1322
03f2bd59
JK
1323* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1324 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1325 become available after that.
1326
71eba9c2 1327* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1328
2bda9cc5
JK
1329* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1330 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1331 gcc version 4.7.
1332
ed59ded5
DE
1333* New commands
1334
1335!SHELL COMMAND
1336 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1337 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1338
9c06b0b4
TJB
1339* Changed commands
1340
1341watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1342 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1343 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1344
dbaefcf7
DE
1345info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1346 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1347 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1348
71eba9c2 1349info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1350 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1351 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1352 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1353 name starts with a hyphen.
1354
3065dfb6
SS
1355collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1356 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1357 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1358 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1359 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1360 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1361 number of bytes that will be collected.
1362
f196051f
SS
1363tstart [NOTES]
1364 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1365 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1366 setting the variable trace-notes.
1367
1368tstop [NOTES]
1369 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1370 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1371 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1372 trace-stop-notes.
1373
d248b706
KY
1374* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1375 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1376 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1377 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1378 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1379 is running.
1380
405f8e94
SS
1381* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1382 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1383 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1384
2bda9cc5
JK
1385* New options
1386
45cfd468
DE
1387set debug dwarf2-read
1388show debug dwarf2-read
1389 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1390 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1391
1392set debug symtab-create
1393show debug symtab-create
1394 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1395 creation. The default is off.
1396
baacfb07
PM
1397set extended-prompt
1398show extended-prompt
1399 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1400 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1401 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1402 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1403 prompt is displayed.
1404
2bda9cc5
JK
1405set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1406show print entry-values
1407 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1408 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1409 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1410
1411set debug entry-values
1412show debug entry-values
1413 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1414 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1415
c011a4f4
DE
1416set basenames-may-differ
1417show basenames-may-differ
1418 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1419 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1420 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1421 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1422 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1423 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1424 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1425 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1426
f196051f
SS
1427set trace-user
1428show trace-user
1429set trace-notes
1430show trace-notes
1431 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1432 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1433 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1434 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1435
1436set trace-stop-notes
1437show trace-stop-notes
1438 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1439 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1440 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1441 started by someone else.
1442
d248b706
KY
1443* New remote packets
1444
1445QTEnable
1446
1447 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1448
1449QTDisable
1450
1451 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1452
f196051f
SS
1453QTNotes
1454
1455 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1456
1457qTP
1458
1459 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1460
405f8e94
SS
1461qTMinFTPILen
1462
1463 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1464 be placed.
1465
1a532630
PP
1466* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1467 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1468
11315641
YQ
1469* New targets
1470
1471Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1472
87326c78
DD
1473* New Simulators
1474
1475Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1476
e8d56f18
JB
1477*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1478
1479* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1480
d6e00af6 1481*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1482
60f98dde
MS
1483* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1484 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1485 matches the given regular expression.
1486
eee5b35e
DD
1487* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1488
b716877b
AB
1489* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1490 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1491
aae1c79a
DE
1492* New command line options
1493
1494-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1495 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1496
a86caf66
DE
1497* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1498 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1499
99e7ae30
DE
1500* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1501 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1502 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1503
4694da01
TT
1504* GDB now understands thread names.
1505
1506 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1507 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1508
1509 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1510 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1511
f4b8a18d
KW
1512* OpenCL C
1513 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1514 has been integrated into GDB.
1515
585d1eb8
PM
1516* Python scripting
1517
da5d4055
PM
1518 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1519 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1520 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1521
9a6f1302
PM
1522 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1523 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1524 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1525 and allows for more dynamic content.
1526
29703da4
PM
1527 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1528 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1529 have an is_valid method.
1530
350c6c65
PM
1531 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1532 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1533 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1534
6e6fbe60
DE
1535 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1536
585d1eb8
PM
1537 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1538 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1539 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1540 that function like so:
1541
1542 result = some_value (10,20)
1543
0e3509db
DE
1544 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1545 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1546 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1547
7b51bc51
DE
1548 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1549 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1550 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1551 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1552 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1553
1554 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1555 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1556
99e7ae30
DE
1557 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1558
d8e22779
TT
1559 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1560 selected thread.
1561
4694da01
TT
1562 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1563 holds the thread's name.
1564
505500db
SW
1565 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1566 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1567 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1568 The following events are currently supported:
1569 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1570 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1571 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1572
def98928
TT
1573* C++ Improvements:
1574
1575 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1576 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1577
1578 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1579
1580 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1581 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1582 was added to GCC 4.5.
1583
66cb8159
TT
1584 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1585 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1586 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1587 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1588 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1589 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1590
4aac0db7
UW
1591* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1592 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1593 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1594 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1595 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1596
283e6a52
TT
1597* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1598 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1599 execution to a label.
1600
1601* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1602 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1603 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1604 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1605
b56df873 1606* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1607 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1608 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1609 of scope.
1610
ae53ffa4
PA
1611* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1612
1613 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1614 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1615 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1616 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1617 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1618 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1619
1620 (gdb) info threads
1621 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1622
1623 While now you see this:
1624
1625 (gdb) info threads
1626 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1627
1628 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1629 dumps.
1630
1631 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1632 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1633 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1634 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1635
f1310107
TJB
1636* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1637 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1638 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1639 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1640 section in the user manual for more details.
1641
248c9dbc
JB
1642* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1643
1aee7009
JB
1644 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1645 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1646
eb826dc6
MF
1647 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1648
44603653
JB
1649* New native configurations
1650
1651ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1652
91021223
MF
1653* New targets:
1654
1655Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1656
6e1bb179
JB
1657* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1658 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1659 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1660 in the GDB user manual.
1661
50c97f38
TT
1662* Guile support was removed.
1663
448a92bf
MF
1664* New features in the GNU simulator
1665
1666 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1667
66ee2731
MF
1668 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1669
76b8507d 1670*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1671
ba25b921
PA
1672* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1673
1674 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1675 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1676 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1677 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1678 was always disabled for such configurations.
1679
4656f5c6
SW
1680* C++ Improvements:
1681
1682 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1683
1684 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1685 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1686 For example:
1687 namespace A
1688 {
1689 class B { };
1690 void foo (B) { }
1691 }
1692 ...
1693 A::B b
1694 foo(b)
1695 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1696 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1697 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1698
1699 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1700
1701 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1702 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1703 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1704 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1705 entry.
1706 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1707 mentioned flavors of operators.
1708
254e6b9e
DE
1709 ** static const class members
1710
1711 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1712 class definition has been fixed.
1713
711e434b
PM
1714* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1715
1716 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1717 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1718 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1719 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1720 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1721 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1722
0fb4aa4b
PA
1723* Static tracepoints
1724
1725 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1726 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1727 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1728 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1729 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1730 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1731 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1732 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1733 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1734 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1735 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1736 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1737 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1738 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1739 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1740 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1741 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1742 the "New remote packets" section below.
1743
ca11e899
SS
1744* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1745
1746 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1747 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1748 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1749 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1750
1751* Observer mode
1752
1753 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1754 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1755 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1756 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1757 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1758 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1759 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1760
1761* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1762 current thread.
1763
711e434b
PM
1764* New remote packets
1765
1766qGetTIBAddr
1767
1768 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1769
dde08ee1
PA
1770qRelocInsn
1771
1772 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1773 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1774 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1775 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1776 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1777 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1778
0fb4aa4b
PA
1779qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1780
1781 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1782
1783qTSTMat
1784
1785 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1786 program.
1787
1788qXfer:statictrace:read
1789
1790 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1791 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1792 to gdb's qSupported query.
1793
ca11e899
SS
1794QAllow
1795
1796 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1797
1798QTDPsrc
1799
1800 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1801 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1802
3f7b2faa
DE
1803* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1804 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1805 a directory.
1806
d337e9f0
PA
1807* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1808
0fb4aa4b
PA
1809 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1810 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1811 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1812 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1813
1814 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1815 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1816 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1817 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1818 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1819 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1820 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1821
1822 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1823 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1824
c24d0242
PM
1825 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1826
c8d5aac9
L
1827* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1828 it understands register description.
1829
7c953934
TT
1830* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1831
8685c86f
L
1832* X86 general purpose registers
1833
1834 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1835 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1836 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1837 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1838 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1839
95a42b64 1840* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1841 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1842 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1843 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1844 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1845 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1846
8bd10a10
CM
1847* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1848 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1849 in the specified file.
1850
ab38a727
PA
1851* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1852 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1853 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1854 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1855 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1856 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1857 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1858 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1859 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1860 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1861
6149aea9
PA
1862* New commands
1863
f1421989
HZ
1864eval template, expressions...
1865 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1866 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1867
ab38a727
PA
1868set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1869show target-file-system-kind
1870 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1871 names.
1872
6149aea9
PA
1873save breakpoints <filename>
1874 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1875 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1876 definitions, use the `source' command.
1877
1878`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1879is now deprecated.
1880
0fb4aa4b
PA
1881info static-tracepoint-markers
1882 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1883
1884strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1885 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1886 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1887
ca11e899
SS
1888set observer on|off
1889show observer
1890 Enable and disable observer mode.
1891
1892set may-write-registers on|off
1893set may-write-memory on|off
1894set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1895set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1896set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1897set may-interrupt on|off
1898 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1899 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1900 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1901 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1902 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1903 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1904 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1905
1906set record memory-query on|off
1907show record memory-query
1908 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1909 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1910
53a71c06
CR
1911* Changed commands
1912
1913disassemble
1914 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1915
f3e9a817
PM
1916* Python scripting
1917
9279c692
JB
1918** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1919 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1920 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1921 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1922 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1923
adc36818 1924** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1925 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1926 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1927 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1928
fa33c3cd 1929** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1930 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1931
1932** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1933
1934** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1935
967cf477
DE
1936** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1937
8a1ea21f
DE
1938** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1939 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1940 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1941
a7bdde9e
VP
1942* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1943there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1944tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1945regular breakpoints.
1946
05071a4d
PA
1947* New targets
1948
1949ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1950
6aecb9c2
JB
1951* D language support.
1952 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1953 language.
1954
431e49aa
TJB
1955* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1956 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1957 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1958 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1959 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1960
1961* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1962 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1963 conditions of the form:
1964
1965 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1966
1967 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1968 interface mentioned above.
1969
bfbf3774 1970*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1971
4eef138c
TT
1972* C++ Improvements
1973
1974 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1975
1976 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1977 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1978 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1979 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1980 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1981
4eef138c
TT
1982 ** Bug Fixes
1983
1984 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1985 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1986 qualified name.
1987
1988 ** Cast Operators
1989
1990 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1991 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1992
2d1c1221
ME
1993* New targets
1994
1995Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1996Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1997
1998* New Simulators
1999
2000Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 2001Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 2002
6c95b8df
PA
2003* Multi-program debugging.
2004
2005 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2006 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2007 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2008 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2009 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2010 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2011 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2012 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2013
d5551862
SS
2014* New tracing features
2015
2016 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2017
2018 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
2019
2020 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2021 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2022 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2023 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2024 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2025 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2026 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2027 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2028 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2029 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 2030
d5551862 2031 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
2032
2033 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2034 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2035 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2036 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2037 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2038 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2039 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2040 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2041 the regular trace command.
2042
d5551862
SS
2043 ** Disconnected tracing
2044
2045 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2046 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2047 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2048 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2049 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2050
00bf0b85
SS
2051 ** Trace files
2052
2053 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2054 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2055 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2056 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2057 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2058 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2059 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
2060
2061 ** Circular trace buffer
2062
2063 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2064 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2065 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2066 not be available for all target agents.
2067
21a0512e
PP
2068* Changed commands
2069
2070disassemble
2071 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2072 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2073
0fe7935b
DJ
2074info variables
2075 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2076 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2077
fb2e7cb4
JB
2078source
2079 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2080 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2081 support.
2082
2083 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2084 "set script-extension" (see below).
2085
6c95b8df
PA
2086* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2087
399cd161
MS
2088record save [<FILENAME>]
2089 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2090 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2091
2092record restore <FILENAME>
2093 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2094 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2095
6c95b8df
PA
2096add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2097 Add a new inferior.
2098
2099clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2100 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2101 inferior has loaded.
2102
2103remove-inferior ID
2104 Remove an inferior.
2105
2106maint info program-spaces
2107 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2108
9a7071a8
JB
2109set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2110show remote interrupt-sequence
2111 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2112 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2113 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2114 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2115 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2116
2117set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2118show remote interrupt-on-connect
2119 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2120 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2121 Linux kernel.
2122
2123set remotebreak [on | off]
2124show remotebreak
2125Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2126
f61e138d
SS
2127tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2128 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2129
2130info tvariables
2131 List trace state variables and their values.
2132
2133delete tvariable $NAME ...
2134 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2135
6da95a67
SS
2136teval EXPR, ...
2137 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2138 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2139
7a697b8d
SS
2140ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2141 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2142
b0f02ee9
JK
2143* New expression syntax
2144
2145 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2146 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2147
6c95b8df
PA
2148* New options
2149
2150set follow-exec-mode new|same
2151show follow-exec-mode
2152 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2153 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2154 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2155
236f1d4d
SS
2156set default-collect EXPR, ...
2157show default-collect
2158 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2159 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2160 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2161
d5551862
SS
2162set disconnected-tracing
2163show disconnected-tracing
2164 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2165 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2166 upon disconnection.
2167
4daf5ac0
SS
2168set circular-trace-buffer
2169show circular-trace-buffer
2170 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2171 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2172 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2173 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2174
fb2e7cb4
JB
2175set script-extension off|soft|strict
2176show script-extension
2177 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2178 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2179 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2180 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2181 evaluation failed.
2182 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2183
2b71fc8e
JB
2184set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2185show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2186 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2187 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2188 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2189 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2190 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2191 is on.
2192
de2e5182
TT
2193* Python API Improvements
2194
2195 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2196 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2197 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2198
2199 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2200 `is_base_class' attribute.
2201
2202 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2203
2204 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2205 evaluate an expression.
2206
f61e138d
SS
2207* New remote packets
2208
2209QTDV
2210 Define a trace state variable.
2211
2212qTV
2213 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2214
d5551862
SS
2215QTDisconnected
2216 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2217
4daf5ac0
SS
2218QTBuffer:circular
2219 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2220
d5551862
SS
2221qTfP, qTsP
2222 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2223
2d483d34
MS
2224* Bug fixes
2225
2226Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2227
6e0e5977
JB
2228Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2229much more reliable. In particular:
2230 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2231 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2232 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2233 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2234 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2235 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2236 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2237 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2238 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2239 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2240 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2241 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2242 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2243 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2244 non-threaded programs.
2245
93c26624
JK
2246PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2247This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2248libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2249executable program.
2250
abc7453d 2251*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2252
4efc6507
DE
2253* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2254dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2255them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2256for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2257"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2258
782b2b07
SS
2259* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2260breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2261or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2262the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2263for tracepoint actions.
2264
53a71c06
CR
2265* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2266raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2267modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2268
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2269* Process record and replay
2270
2271 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2272 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2273 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2274 execute commands.
2275
64644d9b
MS
2276* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2277step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2278set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2279reverse execution.
2280
b9412953
DD
2281* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2282feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
22832.6.28 or later.
2284
6c7a06a3
TT
2285* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2286target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2287char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2288literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2289U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2290`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2291system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2292the installation instructions for more information.
2293
f1838a98
UW
2294* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2295remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2296with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2297the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2298
55333a84
DE
2299* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2300and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2301
7f6a6314
PM
2302* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2303now complete on file names.
2304
65d12d83
TT
2305* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2306completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2307For instance, consider:
2308
2309 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2310 # struct example variable;
2311 (gdb) p variable.
2312
2313If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2314completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2315
edb3359d
DJ
2316* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2317the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2318
2fae03e8
TT
2319* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2320operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2321macros.
2322
47a3467a 2323* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2324the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2325implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2326
2327* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2328registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2329can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2330and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2331
08388c79
DE
2332* New remote packets
2333
2334qSearch:memory:
2335 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2336
a6f3e723
SL
2337QStartNoAckMode
2338 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2339 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2340 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2341
d7713ae0
EZ
2342vKill
2343 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2344 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2345
07e059b5
VP
2346qXfer:osdata:read
2347 Obtains additional operating system information
2348
47a3467a
PA
2349qXfer:siginfo:read
2350qXfer:siginfo:write
2351 Read or write additional signal information.
2352
060871df
PA
2353* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2354
2355 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2356 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2357 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2358
c055b101 2359* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2360DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2361
2362* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2363and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2364`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2365
31fffb02
CS
2366* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2367with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2368
88d8a8e0
JB
2369* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2370
7f99b190
JB
2371* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2372
ccd213ac
DJ
2373* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2374which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2375
1fddbabb 2376* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2377list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2378
a0ef4274
DJ
2379* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2380conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2381have also been fixed.
2382
bfb8797a 2383* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2384From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2385are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2386
71c25dea
TT
2387* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2388example, given:
2389
2390 template<typename T> class C { };
2391 C<char const *> c;
2392
2393GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2394
2395 ptype C<char const *>
2396 ptype C<char const*>
2397 ptype C<const char *>
2398 ptype C<const char*>
2399
ccd213ac
DJ
2400* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2401
2402 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2403 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2404
7ae0e2a2
UW
2405 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2406 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2407 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2408
a6f3e723
SL
2409 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2410 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2411
da8bd9a3
DJ
2412 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2413 gdbserver.
2414
d70e31dd
DE
2415 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2416 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2417
2418 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2419 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2420 as appropriate.
2421
d57a3c85
TJB
2422* Python scripting
2423
2424 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2425 available is determined at configure time.
2426
d8906c6f
TJB
2427 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2428
aadc346a
JB
2429* Ada tasking support
2430
2431 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2432 been introduced:
2433
2434 info tasks
2435 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2436 info task N
2437 Print detailed information about task number N.
2438 task
2439 Print the task number of the current task.
2440 task N
2441 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2442
adb483fe
DJ
2443* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2444add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2445
2277426b
PA
2446* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2447
2448 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2449 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2450 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2451 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2452 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2453 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2454 below.
2455
08d16641
PA
2456* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2457"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2458information.
2459
e35359c5
UW
2460* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2461to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2462architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2463See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2464more information.
2465
85e747d2
UW
2466* Multi-architecture debugging.
2467
2468 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2469 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2470 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2471 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2472 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2473
2474* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2475use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2476Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2477powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2478--enable-targets configure option.
2479
11ade57a
PA
2480* Non-stop mode debugging.
2481
2482 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2483 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2484 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2485 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2486 section in the user manual for more information.
2487
2488 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2489 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2490 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2491 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2492 extensions on linux targets.
2493
d7713ae0 2494* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2495
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2496catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2497 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2498 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2499 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2500 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2501 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2502 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2503 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2504 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2505
08388c79
DE
2506find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2507 val1 [, val2, ...]
2508 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2509
d57a3c85
TJB
2510maint set python print-stack
2511maint show python print-stack
2512 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2513
2514python [CODE]
2515 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2516
d7713ae0
EZ
2517macro define
2518macro list
2519macro undef
2520 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2521 interactively.
2522
2523info os processes
2524 Show operating system information about processes.
2525
2277426b
PA
2526info inferiors
2527 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2528
2529inferior NUM
2530 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2531
2532detach inferior NUM
2533 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2534
2535kill inferior NUM
2536 Kill inferior number NUM.
2537
d7713ae0
EZ
2538* New options
2539
3285f3fe
UW
2540set spu stop-on-load
2541show spu stop-on-load
2542 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2543
ff1a52c6
UW
2544set spu auto-flush-cache
2545show spu auto-flush-cache
2546 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2547 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2548
d7713ae0
EZ
2549set sh calling-convention
2550show sh calling-convention
2551 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2552
e0a3ce09 2553set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2554show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2555 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2556
2557set disassemble-next-line
2558show disassemble-next-line
2559 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2560 the debuggee stops.
2561
2562set remote noack-packet
2563show remote noack-packet
2564 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2565 under "New remote packets."
2566
2567set remote query-attached-packet
2568show remote query-attached-packet
2569 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2570
2571set remote read-siginfo-object
2572show remote read-siginfo-object
2573 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2574 packet.
2575
2576set remote write-siginfo-object
2577show remote write-siginfo-object
2578 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2579 packet.
2580
40ab02ce
MS
2581set remote reverse-continue
2582show remote reverse-continue
2583 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2584
2585set remote reverse-step
2586show remote reverse-step
2587 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2588
d7713ae0
EZ
2589set displaced-stepping
2590show displaced-stepping
2591 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2592 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2593 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2594
2595set debug displaced
2596show debug displaced
2597 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2598
2599maint set internal-error
2600maint show internal-error
2601 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2602
2603maint set internal-warning
2604maint show internal-warning
2605 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2606
ccd213ac
DJ
2607set exec-wrapper
2608show exec-wrapper
2609unset exec-wrapper
2610 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2611
aad4b048
JB
2612set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2613show multiple-symbols
2614 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2615 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2616 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2617
74960c60
VP
2618set breakpoint always-inserted
2619show breakpoint always-inserted
2620 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2621 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2622 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2623
0428b8f5
DJ
2624set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2625show arm fallback-mode
2626set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2627show arm force-mode
2628 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2629 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2630 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2631 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2632
10568435
JK
2633set disable-randomization
2634show disable-randomization
2635 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2636 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2637 multiple debugging sessions.
2638
d7713ae0
EZ
2639set non-stop
2640show non-stop
2641 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2642 a breakpoint.
2643
b3eb342c 2644set target-async
d7713ae0 2645show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2646 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2647 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2648 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2649 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2650
6c7a06a3
TT
2651set target-wide-charset
2652show target-wide-charset
2653 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2654 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2655
84603566
SL
2656set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2657show tcp auto-retry
2658set tcp connect-timeout
2659show tcp connect-timeout
2660 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2661 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2662 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2663
17a37d48
PP
2664set libthread-db-search-path
2665show libthread-db-search-path
2666 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2667 libthread_db.
2668
d4db2f36
PA
2669set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2670show schedule-multiple
2671 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2672 the current process.
2673
4e5d721f
DE
2674set stack-cache
2675show stack-cache
2676 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2677 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2678 affecting correctness.
2679
910c5da8
JB
2680set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2681show interactive-mode
2682 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2683 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2684 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2685 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2686 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2687
2277426b
PA
2688* Removed commands
2689
2690info forks
2691 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2692 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2693 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2694 command.
2695
2696fork NUM
2697 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2698 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2699 alias for the `fork' command.
2700
2701process PID
2702 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2703 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2704 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2705
2706delete fork NUM
2707 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2708 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2709 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2710 fork' command.
2711
2712detach fork NUM
2713 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2714 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2715 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2716 fork' command.
2717
a80b95ba
TG
2718* New native configurations
2719
2720x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2721
b8bfd3ed
JB
2722x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2723
75a2d5e7
TT
2724* New targets
2725
c28c63d8 2726Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2727x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2728x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2729S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2730
6de3146c
PA
2731* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2732 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2733
d5cbbe6e
JB
2734* Removed commands
2735
2736catch load
2737catch unload
2738 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2739
75feb17d 2740*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2741
af5ca30d
NH
2742* New native configurations
2743
2744NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2745Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2746
2747* New targets
2748
2749NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2750Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2751
7a404eba
PA
2752* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2753
2754 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2755 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2756 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2757 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2758
430ebac9
PA
2759* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2760(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2761
fe6fbf8b 2762* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2763is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2764
2765* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2766including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2767and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2768
10665d76
JB
2769* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2770accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2771more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2772
7cc46491
DJ
2773* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2774
d71340b8
DJ
2775* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2776registers on PowerPC targets.
2777
523c4513
DJ
2778* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2779targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2780
a6b151f1
DJ
2781* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2782commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2783
2d717e4f
DJ
2784* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2785extended-remote mode.
2786
24a836bd 2787* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2788The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2789error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2790The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2791
d0c678e6
UW
2792* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2793building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2794target architectures.
2795
d64a946d
TJB
2796* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2797Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2798now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2799stored in two consecutive float registers.
2800
ee163bf5
VP
2801* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2802breakpoints now.
2803
b93b6ca7 2804* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2805Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2806include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2807 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2808 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2809 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2810 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2811 of an assignment
2812 - Improved command completion in Ada
2813 - Several bug fixes
2814
d001be7a
DJ
2815* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2816process.
2817
a6b151f1
DJ
2818* New commands
2819
6d53d0af
JB
2820set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2821show print frame-arguments
2822 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2823 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2824
a6b151f1
DJ
2825remote put
2826remote get
2827remote delete
2828 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2829
2830* New MI commands
2831
2832-target-file-put
2833-target-file-get
2834-target-file-delete
2835 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2836
2837* New remote packets
2838
2839vFile:open:
2840vFile:close:
2841vFile:pread:
2842vFile:pwrite:
2843vFile:unlink:
2844 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2845
2d717e4f
DJ
2846vAttach
2847 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2848 mode.
2849
2850vRun
2851 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2852
8d5f9c6f 2853*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2854
19d378fc
MS
2855* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2856bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2857Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2858
3a40aaa0
UW
2859* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2860symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2861-Bsymbolic linker option.
2862
a6ec25f2
BW
2863* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2864recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2865is not supported.
2866
6dd09645
JB
2867* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2868frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2869
c9bb8148
DJ
2870* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
287132-bit or 64-bit register values.
2872
0d5de010
DJ
2873* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2874
23181151
DJ
2875* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2876target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2877a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2878
ea37ba09
DJ
2879* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2880automatically displayed as character or string data.
2881
2882* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2883arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2884as strings.
e1f48ead 2885
123dc839
DJ
2886* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2887for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2888only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2889
05a4558a
DJ
2890* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2891iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2892
7c963485
PA
2893* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2894ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2895has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2896
b18be20d
DJ
2897* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2898
0ca420ce
UW
2899* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2900
31d99776
DJ
2901* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2902layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2903segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2904
a4642986
MR
2905* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2906immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2907
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2908* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2909"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2910packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2911where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2912Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2913
2914* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2915(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2916
2917* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2918according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2919
c9bb8148
DJ
2920* New commands
2921
23776285
MR
2922set remoteflow
2923show remoteflow
2924 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2925 when debugging using remote targets.
2926
c9bb8148
DJ
2927set mem inaccessible-by-default
2928show mem inaccessible-by-default
2929 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2930 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2931 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2932 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2933 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2934
2935set breakpoint auto-hw
2936show breakpoint auto-hw
2937 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2938 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2939 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2940 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2941 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2942 including "next" and "finish".
2943
0e420bd8
JB
2944catch exception
2945catch exception unhandled
2946 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2947
2948catch assert
2949 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2950
f822c95b
DJ
2951set sysroot
2952show sysroot
2953 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2954 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2955 an alias to "set sysroot".
2956
83cc5c53
UW
2957info spu
2958 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2959 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2960 architecture.
2961
bd372731
MK
2962* New native configurations
2963
2964OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2965
23181151
DJ
2966set tdesc filename
2967unset tdesc filename
2968show tdesc filename
2969 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2970 not query the target for its built-in description.
2971
c9bb8148
DJ
2972* New targets
2973
54fe9172 2974OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2975MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2976Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2977
6dd09645
JB
2978* New remote packets
2979
2980QPassSignals:
2981 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2982 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2983
23181151
DJ
2984qXfer:features:read:
2985 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2986 features.
6dd09645 2987
83cc5c53
UW
2988qXfer:spu:read:
2989qXfer:spu:write:
2990 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2991 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2992
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2993qXfer:libraries:read:
2994 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2995 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2996 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2997 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2998
483367ee
DJ
2999* Removed targets
3000
3001Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3002
d08950c4
UW
3003alpha*-*-osf1*
3004alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 3005d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
3006hppa*-*-hiux*
3007i[34567]86-ncr-*
3008i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3009i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3010i[34567]86-*-netware*
3011i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3012i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3013i[34567]86-*-sco*
3014i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3015i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3016i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3017i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3018i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3019i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3020i[34567]86-*-isc*
3021m68*-cisco*-*
3022m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 3023mips*-*-pe
483367ee 3024rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 3025sh*-*-pe
483367ee 3026
7ce59000
DJ
3027* Other removed features
3028
3029target abug
3030target cpu32bug
3031target est
3032target rom68k
3033
3034 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3035
ea35711c
DJ
3036target hms
3037target e7000
3038target sh3
3039target sh3e
3040
3041 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3042 H8/300.
3043
3044target ocd
3045
3046 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3047 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3048 interfaces.
3049
7ce59000
DJ
3050DWARF 1 support
3051
3052 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3053 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3054
54d61198
DJ
3055Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3056
3057 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3058 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3059 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3060 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3061
ea35711c
DJ
3062MIPS ".pdr" sections
3063
3064 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3065 in debugging information.
3066
3067Scheme support
3068
3069 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3070 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3071
1a69e1e4
DJ
3072set mips stack-arg-size
3073set mips saved-gpreg-size
3074
3075 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3076
6dd09645 3077*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 3078
ca3bf3bd
DJ
3079* New targets
3080
3081Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 3082Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 3083
6aec2e11
DJ
3084* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3085(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3086running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3087
3088* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3089Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3090supported.
3091
17218d91
DJ
3092* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3093broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3094
9ebce043
DJ
3095* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3096stub provides the required support.
3097
7d3d3ece
DJ
3098* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3099longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3100
4f8253f3
JB
3101* New commands
3102
3103set substitute-path
3104unset substitute-path
3105show substitute-path
3106 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3107 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3108 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3109 between compilation and debugging.
3110
9fa66fd7
AS
3111set trace-commands
3112show trace-commands
3113 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3114 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3115 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3116
1f5befc1
DJ
3117* REMOVED features
3118
3119The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3120
2ec3381a
DJ
3121Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3122an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3123
3d00d119
DJ
3124The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3125
be2a5f71
DJ
3126* New remote packets
3127
3128qSupported:
3129 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3130 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3131 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3132 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3133 target.
3134
0876f84a
DJ
3135qXfer:auxv:read:
3136 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3137 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3138
9ebce043
DJ
3139qXfer:memory-map:read:
3140 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3141 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3142
3143vFlashErase:
3144vFlashWrite:
3145vFlashDone:
3146 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3147
0876f84a
DJ
3148* Removed remote packets
3149
3150qPart:auxv:read:
3151 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3152 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3153
e374b601 3154*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 3155
96309189
MS
3156* New targets
3157
3158Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3159
3160Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3161
53e5f3cf
AS
3162* New commands
3163
3164init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3165 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3166
ac264b3b
MS
3167The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3168
3169checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3170
3171restart <n> Return the program state to a
3172 previously saved state.
3173
3174info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3175
3176delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3177
3178set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3179 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3180
3181info forks List forks of the user program that
3182 are available to be debugged.
3183
3184fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3185 forks of the user program that are
3186 available to be debugged.
3187
3188delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3189 that are available to be debugged (and
3190 kill the forked process).
3191
3192detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3193 that are available to be debugged (and
3194 allow the process to continue).
3195
3950dc3f
NS
3196* New architecture
3197
3198Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3199
0ea3f30e
DJ
3200* Improved Windows host support
3201
3202GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3203native console support, and remote communications using either
3204network sockets or serial ports.
3205
f79daebb
GM
3206* Improved Modula-2 language support
3207
3208GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3209basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3210pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3211printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3212written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3213GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3214
acab6ab2
MM
3215* REMOVED features
3216
3217The ARM rdi-share module.
3218
f4267320
DJ
3219The Netware NLM debug server.
3220
53e5f3cf 3221*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3222
e0ecbda1
MK
3223* New native configurations
3224
02a677ac 3225OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3226OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3227
d64a6579
KB
3228* New targets
3229
3230Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3231
b33a6190
AS
3232* New command line options
3233
3234--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3235--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3236 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3237--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3238 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3239 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3240 with the --command (-x) option.
3241
11dced61
AC
3242* Deprecated commands removed
3243
3244The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3245removed:
3246
3247 Command Replacement
3248 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3249 othernames set arm disassembler
3250 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3251 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3252 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3253 regs info registers
3254
6fe85783
MK
3255* New BSD user-level threads support
3256
3257It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3258library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3259configurations are:
3260
3261FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3262FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3263OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3264
3265Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3266are not yet supported.
3267
5260ca71
MS
3268* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3269(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3270
e84ecc99
AC
3271* REMOVED configurations and files
3272
3273VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3274Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3275National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3276
31e35378
JB
3277* New "set print array-indexes" command
3278
3279After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3280when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3281behavior.
3282
e85e5c83
MK
3283* VAX floating point support
3284
3285GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3286
d91e9901
AS
3287* User-defined command support
3288
3289In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3290to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3291section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3292
f2cb65ca
MC
3293*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3294
f47b1503
AS
3295* New command line option
3296
3297GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3298debugging.
3299
f2cb65ca
MC
3300* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3301
3302GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3303information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3304by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3305proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3306to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3307
d08c0230
AC
3308* Internationalization
3309
3310When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3311internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3312continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3313
117ea3cf
PH
3314* Ada
3315
3316Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3317implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3318into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3319
d08c0230
AC
3320* New native configurations
3321
3322GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3323
3324* Remote 'p' packet
3325
3326GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3327packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3328
3329* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3330
3331GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3332The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3333features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3334i386 application).
3335
3336GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3337compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3338continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3339configurations:
3340
3341hppa-*-hpux
3342ia64-*-aix
3343mips-*-irix*
3344*-*-lynx
3345mips-*-linux-gnu
3346sds protocol
3347xdr protocol
3348powerpc bdm protocol
3349
3350Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3351made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3352
3353* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3354
3355Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3356been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3357configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3358permanently REMOVED.
3359
3360h8300-*-*
3361mcore-*-*
3362mn10300-*-*
3363ns32k-*-*
3364sh64-*-*
3365v850-*-*
3366
ebb7c577
AC
3367*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3368
3369* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3370
3371When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3372heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3373been fixed.
3374
3375* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3376
3377When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3378fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3379IRIX long double values).
3380
3381* VAX and "next"
3382
3383A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3384command. This problem has been fixed.
3385
860660cb 3386*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3387
0dea2468
AC
3388* Fix for ``many threads''
3389
3390On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3391rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3392error message:
3393
3394 ptrace: No such process.
3395 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3396
3397This problem has been fixed.
3398
2c07db7a
AC
3399* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3400
3401Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3402GDB to dump core).
3403
c23968a2
JB
3404* New ``start'' command.
3405
3406This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3407
71009278
MK
3408* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3409
3410Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3411live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3412platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3413
3414FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3415FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3416NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3417NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3418NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3419OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3420OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3421OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3422OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3423
3c0b7db2
AC
3424* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3425
3426Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3427These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3428of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3429call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3430signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3431
73cc75f3
AC
3432Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3433features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3434include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3435
7243600a
BF
3436* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3437
6f606e1c
MK
3438* New native configurations
3439
97dc871c 3440GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3441OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3442OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3443OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3444OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3445NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3446OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3447
a1b461bf
AC
3448* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3449
3450GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3451The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3452including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3453migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3454compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3455work, was also included.
3456
3457GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3458module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3459
3460h8300-*-*
3461mcore-*-*
3462mn10300-*-*
3463ns32k-*-*
3464sh64-*-*
3465v850-*-*
3466xstormy16-*-*
3467
3468Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3469made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3470
3c7012f5
AC
3471* REMOVED configurations and files
3472
3473Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3474Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3475Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3476Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3477Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3478AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3479Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3480decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3481riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3482sonymips mips-sony-*
3483sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3484
e5fe55f7
AC
3485*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3486
3487* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3488
3489The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3490GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3491command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3492program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3493with GDB".
3494
3495* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3496
3497Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3498libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3499cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3500GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3501shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3502the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3503are created.
3504
3505Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3506
3507* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3508
3509The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3510non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3511compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3512
3513* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3514
3515Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3516wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3517
3518* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3519
3520The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3521permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3522systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3523
3524* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3525
3526Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3527has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3528
3529* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3530
3531GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3532its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3533panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3534
3535* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3536
3537When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3538by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3539not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3540
faae5abe 3541*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3542
9175c9a3
MC
3543* Removed --with-mmalloc
3544
3545Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3546conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3547
3cc87ec0
MK
3548* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3549
3550The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3551the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3552and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3553you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3554
f0424ef6
MK
3555* Revised SPARC target
3556
3557The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3558FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3559support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3560from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3561(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3562
59659be2
ILT
3563* New C++ demangler
3564
3565GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3566names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3567with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3568programs.
3569
9e08b29b
DJ
3570* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3571
3572GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3573arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3574encountered these.
3575
8dfe8985
DC
3576* C++ nested types and namespaces
3577
3578GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3579improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3580is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3581Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3582namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3583"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3584frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3585if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3586GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3587
cced5e27
MK
3588* New native configurations
3589
3590NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3591OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3592OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3593OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3594OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3595
b4b4b794
KI
3596* New debugging protocols
3597
3598M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3599
7989c619
AC
3600* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3601
3602The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3603and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3604tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3605
5994185b
AC
3606* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3607
3608Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3609been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3610configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3611permanently REMOVED.
3612
3613Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3614Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3615Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3616Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3617Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3618AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3619Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3620decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3621riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3622sonymips mips-sony-*
3623sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3624
0ddabb4c
AC
3625* REMOVED configurations and files
3626
3627SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3628SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3629Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3630Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3631H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3632HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3633HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3634HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3635PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3636386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3637Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3638 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3639 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3640SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3641SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3642Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3643Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3644
c7f1390e
DJ
3645*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3646
1fe43d45
AC
3647* Objective-C
3648
3649Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3650integrated into GDB.
3651
e6beb428
AC
3652* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3653
3654DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3655information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3656By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3657backtraces.
3658
3659The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3660have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3661DWARF 2 CFI support.
3662
3663* Hosted file I/O.
3664
3665GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3666file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3667remote protocol documentation for details.
3668
3669* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3670
3671All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3672architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3673to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3674ppc32 on ppc64).
3675
3676* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3677
3678GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3679per-thread variables.
3680
3681* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3682
3683GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3684GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3685
3686* Separate debug info.
3687
3688GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3689automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3690of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3691system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3692and optional debug files.
3693
3694* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3695
3696DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3697describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3698debugger.
3699
3700GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3701for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3702
3703* Java
3704
3705A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3706Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3707considered "useable".
3708
85f8f974
DJ
3709* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3710
3711The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3712commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3713kernel.
3714
0fac0b41
DJ
3715* GDB supports logging output to a file
3716
3717There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3718used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3719
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3720* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3721
3722The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3723disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3724command.
3725
e286caf2 3726* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3727
3728The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3729registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3730
d28f9cdf
DJ
3731* Profiling support
3732
3733A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3734be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3735session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3736"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3737data, for more informative profiling results.
3738
da0f9dcd
AC
3739* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3740
3741The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3742option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3743"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3744
3745Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3746removed.
3747
fb9b6b35
JJ
3748Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3749Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3750Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3751 in a subsequent -var-update.
3752
954a4db8
MK
3753* New native configurations.
3754
3755FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3756
6760f9e6
JB
3757* Multi-arched targets.
3758
b4263afa 3759HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3760Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3761
1b831c93
AC
3762* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3763
3764Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3765been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3766configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3767permanently REMOVED.
3768
8b0e5691 3769Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3770Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3771H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3772HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3773HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3774HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3775PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3776Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3777 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3778 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3779Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3780Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3781
5835abe7
NC
3782* REMOVED configurations and files
3783
3784V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3785Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3786IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3787i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3788i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3789i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3790HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3791 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3792 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3793Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3794Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3795Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3796OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3797I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3798
a094c6fb
AC
3799* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3800
3801The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3802the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3803context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3804address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3805The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3806
299ffc64 3807*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3808
46248966
AC
3809* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3810
3811When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3812`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3813in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3814library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3815shared libs like mad''.
3816
b9d14705 3817* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3818
b9d14705
DJ
3819Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3820the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3821arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3822powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3823
e0e9281e
JB
3824* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3825
3826GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3827and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3828they expand.
3829
dd73b9bb
AC
3830The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3831invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3832
3833The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3834macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3835
e0e9281e
JB
3836Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3837information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3838your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3839information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3840
2250ee0c
CV
3841* Multi-arched targets.
3842
6e3ba3b8
JT
3843DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3844DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3845NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3846National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3847Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3848Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3849
cd9bfe15 3850* New targets.
e33ce519 3851
456f8b9d
DB
3852Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3853
e33ce519 3854
da8ca43d
JT
3855* New native configurations
3856
3857Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3858SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3859MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3860UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3861
cd9bfe15
AC
3862* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3863
3864Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3865been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3866configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3867permanently REMOVED.
3868
92eb23c5 3869Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3870OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3871IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3872Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3873Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3874Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3875i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3876i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3877i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3878HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3879 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3880 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3881I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3882
db034ac5
AC
3883* OBSOLETE languages
3884
3885CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3886
cd9bfe15
AC
3887* REMOVED configurations and files
3888
3889AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3890A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3891AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3892AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3893AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3894
3895testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3896
20f01a46
DH
3897* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3898
3899This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3900commands. The default is 1024.
3901
a5941fbf
MK
3902* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3903
3904Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3905
89743e04
MS
3906* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3907
3908These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3909to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3910from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3911
9fb14e79
JB
3912* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3913
3914The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3915including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3916of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3917
2037aebb
AC
3918*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3919
3920* New targets.
3921
3922Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3923
3924* Bug fixes
3925
3926gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3927mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3928Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3929
3930gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3931dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3932Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3933
3934Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3935Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3936By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3937
3938i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3939avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3940By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3941
37057839 3942*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3943
1a703748
MS
3944* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3945
3946This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3947really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3948In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3949target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3950This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3951(notably embedded) targets.
3952
cefd4ef5
MS
3953* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3954
55241689
AC
3955This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3956process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3957GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3958hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3959
352ed7b4
MS
3960* New command line option
3961
3962GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3963
3964* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3965
3966There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3967command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3968a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3969be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3970open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3971issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3972a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3973it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3974GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3975is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3976
fe419ffc
RE
3977* Changes in ARM configurations.
3978
3979Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3980configuration is fully multi-arch.
3981
eb7cedd9
MK
3982* New native configurations
3983
fe419ffc 3984ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3985x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3986AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3987Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3988
c9f63e6b
CV
3989* New targets
3990
3991Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3992
9b4ff276
AC
3993* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3994
3995Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3996been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3997configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3998permanently REMOVED.
3999
4000AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4001A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4002AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4003AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4004AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4005
b4ceaee6 4006testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 4007
e2caac18
AC
4008* REMOVED configurations and files
4009
4010TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 4011WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
4012PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4013PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4014PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 4015Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
4016Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4017 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 4018SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 4019Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
4020Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4021ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 4022Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 4023
c2a727fa
TT
4024* Changes to command line processing
4025
4026The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4027for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4028
467d8519
TT
4029* Changes to key bindings
4030
4031There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4032
7072a954
AC
4033*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4034
4035Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4036
4037Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4038corrupted.
4039
4040Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4041
4042Numerous documentation fixes.
4043
4044Numerous testsuite fixes.
4045
34f47bc4 4046*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
4047
4048* New native configurations
4049
4050Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4051x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 4052MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
4053MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4054ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 4055s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 4056
bf64bfd6
AC
4057* New targets
4058
def90278 4059Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 4060CRIS cris-axis
55241689 4061UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 4062
17e78a56 4063* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
4064
4065x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 4066Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
4067Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4068 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
4069TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4070WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 4071Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
4072PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4073PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4074PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 4075SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
4076Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4077ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 4078Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 4079
17e78a56
AC
4080stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4081kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4082
7fcca85b
AC
4083Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4084been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4085configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4086permanently REMOVED.
4087
a196c81c 4088* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
4089
4090Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4091Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4092Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4093ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4094Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 4095ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 4096
6d6b80e5 4097* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 4098
6d6b80e5 4099GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
4100sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4101present.
4102
bf64bfd6
AC
4103* Other news:
4104
e23194cb
EZ
4105* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4106
4107* The MI enabled by default.
4108
4109The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4110revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4111engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4112using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4113which is now deprecated.
4114
4115* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4116
4117GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4118main features are supported:
4119
4120 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4121
4122 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4123 extension;
4124
4125 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4126
4127 - a Pascal expression parser.
4128
4129However, some important features are not yet supported.
4130
4131 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4132
4133 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4134
4135 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4136 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4137
4138 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4139
4140 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4141
4142* Changes in completion.
4143
4144Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4145to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4146users expect at the shell prompt.
4147
4148Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4149`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4150program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4151files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4152be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4153considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4154name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4155
4156`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4157
4158* New platform-independent commands:
4159
4160It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4161hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4162documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4163
4164* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4165
d7275149
MK
4166Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4167revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4168many threads as your system allows you to have.
4169
e23194cb
EZ
4170Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4171
d7275149
MK
4172Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4173multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
4174
4175* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
4176
4177Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4178
e23194cb
EZ
4179GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4180debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4181supported.)
4182
4183* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4184
4185Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4186breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4187implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4188put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4189and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4190registers.
4191
4192The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4193debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4194watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4195
4196* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4197
4198New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4199the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4200
4201New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4202display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4203IDT.
4204
4205New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4206from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4207New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4208a given linear address.
4209
4210GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4211program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4212which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4213
4214DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4215
6c56c069
EZ
4216It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4217
e23194cb
EZ
4218* Changes in documentation.
4219
4220All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4221Documentation License.
4222
4223Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4224manual.
4225
4226TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4227
4228Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4229manual.
4230
4231The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4232documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4233hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4234
5d6640b1
AC
4235* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4236
4237The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4238``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4239contents of this file.
4240
1a1d8446
AC
4241* gdba.el deleted
4242
4243GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4244
9debab2f 4245*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4246
c63ce875
EZ
4247* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4248
4249Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4250programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4251displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4252greater level of detail.
4253
4254* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4255
4256It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4257bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4258on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4259written.
4260
4261* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4262
4263The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4264necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4265machines ``out of the box''.
4266
4267The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4268possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4269signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4270would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4271interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4272
4273It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4274standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4275even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4276and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4277terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4278
4279The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4280enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4281also works.
4282
4283DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4284GDB.
4285
4286It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4287directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4288times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4289breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4290
ed9a39eb
JM
4291* New native configurations
4292
4293ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4294PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4295
7a292a7a
SS
4296* New targets
4297
96baa820 4298Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4299x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4300PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4301TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4302
085dd6e6
JM
4303* OBSOLETE configurations
4304
4305Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4306Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4307Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4308ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4309Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4310
9debab2f
AC
4311Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4312but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4313these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4314be permanently REMOVED.
4315
5330533d
SS
4316* Gould support removed
4317
4318Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4319
bc9e5bbf
AC
4320* New features for SVR4
4321
4322On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4323without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4324load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4325
4326* Many C++ enhancements
4327
4328C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4329in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4330
adf40b2e
JM
4331* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4332
4333A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4334sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4335with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4336``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4337
4338 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4339 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4340
43e526b9
JM
4341* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4342
4343A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4344expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4345instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4346
4347The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4348added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4349
96baa820
JM
4350* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4351
4352The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4353``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4354include ``set remote P-packet''.
4355
11cf8741
JM
4356* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4357
4358The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4359accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4360``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4361
7876dd43
DB
4362* ``apropos'' command added.
4363
4364The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4365documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4366try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4367
bc9e5bbf
AC
4368* New MI interface
4369
4370A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4371interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4372process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4373"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4374enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4375
4376 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4377
c906108c
SS
4378*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4379
4380* New native configurations
4381
4382HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4383HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4384M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4385
4386* New targets
4387
4388Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4389Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4390Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4391
4392* OBSOLETE configurations
4393
4394Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4395
4396Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4397but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4398these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4399be permanently REMOVED.
4400
4401* ANSI/ISO C
4402
4403As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4404buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4405containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4406use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4407available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4408configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4409information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4410already.
4411
4412* Readline 2.2
4413
4414GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4415
4416* set extension-language
4417
4418You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4419languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4420you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4421 set extension-language .c c++
4422The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4423and their associated languages.
4424
4425* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4426
4427When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4428you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4429PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4430
4431 set processor NAME
4432
4433sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4434following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4435
4436 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4437 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4438 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4439 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4440 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4441 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4442 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4443 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4444 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4445 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4446 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4447
4448At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4449special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4450registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4451only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4452
4453* HP-UX support
4454
4455Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4456more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4457library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4458support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4459for xdb and dbx commands.
4460
4461* Catchpoints
4462
4463HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4464generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4465to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4466
4467This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4468argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4469output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4470
4471* Debugging across forks
4472
4473On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4474in the inferior.
4475
4476* TUI
4477
4478HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4479it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4480configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4481
4482* GDB remote protocol additions
4483
4484A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4485Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4486fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4487allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4488
4489For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4490full 64-bit address. The command
4491
4492 set remoteaddresssize 32
4493
4494can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4495the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4496will be discarded.
4497
4498In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4499command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4500
4501 maint packet heythere
4502
4503sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4504disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4505time.
4506
4507The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4508target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4509downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4510
4511* Tracing can collect general expressions
4512
4513You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4514further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4515doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4516
4517* mask-address variable for Mips
4518
4519For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4520a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4521of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4522
4523* Higher serial baud rates
4524
4525GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4526230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4527to achieve all of these rates.)
4528
4529* i960 simulator
4530
4531The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4532builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4533
4534
4535*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4536
4537* New native configurations
4538
4539Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4540Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4541Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4542PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4543PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4544Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4545Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4546
4547* New targets
4548
4549Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4550Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4551Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4552Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4553MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4554MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4555MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4556Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4557Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4558Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4559NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4560
4561* New debugging protocols
4562
4563ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4564M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4565DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4566PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4567PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4568Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4569
4570* DWARF 2
4571
4572All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4573format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4574information.
4575
4576* Java frontend
4577
4578GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4579only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4580
4581* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4582
4583For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4584loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4585locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4586
4587* Live range splitting
4588
4589GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4590range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4591more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4592
4593* Hurd support
4594
4595GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4596updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4597
4598* ARM Thumb support
4599
4600GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4601instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4602instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4603accordingly.
4604
4605* MIPS16 support
4606
4607GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4608instruction set.
4609
4610* Overlay support
4611
4612GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4613linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4614will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4615control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4616additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4617in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4618
4619* info symbol
4620
4621The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4622the symbol at the specified address.
4623
4624* Trace support
4625
4626The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4627asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4628extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4629includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4630file tracepoint.c for more details.
4631
4632* MIPS simulator
4633
4634Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4635by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4636of most MIPS variants.
4637
4638* Sparc simulator
4639
4640Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4641by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4642Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4643
4644* set architecture
4645
4646For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4647basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4648architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4649the possible architectures.
4650
4651*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4652
4653* New native configurations
4654
4655Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4656M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4657PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4658PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4659PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4660RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4661
4662* New targets
4663
4664ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4665I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4666MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4667MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4668PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4669Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4670Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4671
4672* PowerPC simulator
4673
4674The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4675contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4676PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4677basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4678performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4679
4680* Solaris 2.5
4681
4682GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4683
4684* Windows 95/NT native
4685
4686GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4687To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4688which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4689Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4690ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4691
4692* dont-repeat command
4693
4694If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4695command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4696useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4697extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4698
4699* Send break instead of ^C
4700
4701The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4702rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4703GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4704
4705* Remote protocol timeout
4706
4707The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4708that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4709to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4710
4711* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4712
4713By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4714loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4715stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4716when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4717in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4718
4719Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4720/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4721automatically on hpux10.
4722
4723* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4724
4725Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4726
4727* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4728
4729When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4730may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4731the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4732every character. The default value is 1050.
4733
4734* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4735
4736If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4737a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4738replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4739details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4740remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4741to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4742
4743* Speedups for remote debugging
4744
4745GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4746the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4747and more efficient S-record downloading.
4748
4749* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4750
4751GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4752Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4753
4754*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4755
4756* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4757
4758The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4759can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4760
4761* Remote targets use caching
4762
4763Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4764remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4765it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4766debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4767off' turns the the data cache off.
4768
4769* Remote targets may have threads
4770
4771The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4772in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4773gdb/remote.c for details.
4774
4775* NetROM support
4776
4777If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4778support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4779acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4780write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4781support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4782another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4783sequence is something like
4784
4785 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4786 load <prog>
4787 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4788
4789* Macintosh host
4790
4791GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4792may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4793it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4794available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4795device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4796directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4797scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4798mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4799
4800* Autoconf
4801
4802GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4803but does simplify configuration and building.
4804
4805* hpux10
4806
4807GDB now supports hpux10.
4808
4809*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4810
4811* New native configurations
4812
4813x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4814x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4815NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4816Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4817
4818* New targets
4819
4820A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4821HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4822CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4823PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4824WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4825
4826* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4827
4828GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4829possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4830filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4831the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4832if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4833
4834* Arguments to user-defined commands
4835
4836User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4837Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4838trivial example:
4839define adder
4840 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4841
4842To execute the command use:
4843adder 1 2 3
4844
4845Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4846Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4847use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4848
4849* New `if' and `while' commands
4850
4851This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4852commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4853expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4854execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4855terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4856`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4857if the expression is zero.
4858
4859* Fortran source language mode
4860
4861GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4862Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4863variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4864with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4865Fortran compilers.
4866
4867* Better HPUX support
4868
4869Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4870running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4871processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4872for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4873that behavior do the following before running the program:
4874
4875 adb -w a.out
4876 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4877 control-d
4878
4879This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4880To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4881
4882 adb -w a.out
4883 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4884 control-d
4885
4886You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4887the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4888external linkage.
4889
4890GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4891HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4892
4893* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4894
4895You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4896commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4897current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4898"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4899associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4900configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4901
4902* New DOS host serial code
4903
4904This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4905no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4906a PC's serial port.
4907
4908*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4909
4910* New "complete" command
4911
4912This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4913were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4914
4915* Trailing space optional in prompt
4916
4917"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4918allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4919
4920* Breakpoint hit counts
4921
4922"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4923has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4924can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4925to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4926less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4927that breakpoint.
4928
4929* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4930
4931"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4932an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4933arrays actually contain only short strings.
4934
4935* Shared library breakpoints
4936
4937In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4938breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4939
4940* Hardware watchpoints
4941
4942There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4943targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4944
55241689 4945Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4946
4947* Annotations
4948
4949Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4950and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4951
4952* Improved Irix 5 support
4953
4954GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4955
4956* Improved HPPA support
4957
4958GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4959
4960* New native configurations
4961
4962Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4963HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4964Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4965RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4966
4967* New targets
4968
4969OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4970MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4971Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4972
4973* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4974
4975There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4976This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4977
4978* Fixes
4979
4980As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4981and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4982
4983*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4984
4985* Irix 5 is now supported
4986
4987* HPPA support
4988
4989GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4990to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4991GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4992of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4993can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4994
4995
4996*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4997
4998* User visible changes:
4999
5000* Remote Debugging
5001
5002The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5003target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5004debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5005integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5006debugging info for the mips target).
5007
5008* DEC Alpha native support
5009
5010GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5011debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5012work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5013Alpha-specific notes.
5014
5015* Preliminary thread implementation
5016
5017GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5018
5019* LynxOS native and target support for 386
5020
5021This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5022to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5023for details).
5024
5025* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5026
5027This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5028mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5029call methods, ...etc.
5030
5031*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5032
5033 * User visible changes:
5034
5035Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5036supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5037other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5038somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5039
5040Filename completion now works.
5041
5042When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5043arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5044addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5045
5046All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5047vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5048should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5049your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5050to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5051
5052 * DEC alpha support
5053
5054This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5055cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5056
5057
5058*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5059
5060 * Testsuite
5061
5062This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5063The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5064via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5065
5066 * C++ demangling
5067
5068'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5069emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5070Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5071disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5072use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5073
5074 * Simulators
5075
5076GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5077So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5078Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5079
5080 * New targets supported
5081
5082H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5083H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5084SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5085Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5086IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5087
5088Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5089version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5090GO32 memory extender.
5091
5092 * New remote protocols
5093
5094MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5095
5096 * New source languages supported
5097
5098This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5099used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5100into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5101
5102
5103*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5104
5105 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5106
5107GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5108version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5109University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5110compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5111format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5112(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5113
5114Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5115
5116 * Faster and better demangling
5117
5118We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5119demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5120character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5121only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5122This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5123increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5124symbol lookups.
5125
5126`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5127from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5128compiler does not actually implement.
5129
5130 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5131
5132In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5133inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5134recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5135very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5136The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5137circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5138fix.
5139
5140The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5141release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5142
5143 * Improved configure script
5144
5145The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5146you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5147host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5148done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5149
5150We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5151version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5152`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5153The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5154only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5155We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5156
5157 * Documentation improvements
5158
5159There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5160produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5161before submitting changes.
5162
5163The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5164M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5165`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5166you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5167a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5168
5169*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5170We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5171been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5172or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5173`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5174around this problem.
5175
5176 * New features
5177
5178GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5179the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5180`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5181the target program.
5182
5183The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5184how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5185
5186 * New native hosts supported
5187
5188HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5189386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5190
5191 * New targets supported
5192
5193AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5194
5195 * New file formats supported
5196
5197BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5198HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5199
5200 * Major bug fixes
5201
5202Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5203
5204We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5205printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5206
5207We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5208for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5209release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5210
5211You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5212will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5213
5214We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5215for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5216especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5217libraries.
5218
5219The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5220information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5221command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5222any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5223when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5224
5225 * Internal improvements
5226
5227GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5228debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5229
5230GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5231Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5232symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5233contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5234shared code that handles any of them.
5235
5236 * New command line options
5237
5238We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5239
5240 * Mmalloc licensing
5241
5242The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5243General Public License.
5244
5245*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5246
5247 * Host/native/target split
5248
5249GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5250hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5251target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5252local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5253ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5254
5255The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5256GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5257is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5258code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5259any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5260built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5261handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5262
5263GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5264It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5265plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5266
5267 * New hosts supported
5268
5269HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5270386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5271386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5272
5273 * New targets supported
5274
5275Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
527668030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5277
5278 * New native hosts supported
5279
5280386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5281 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5282386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5283
5284 * New file formats supported
5285
5286BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5287supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5288format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5289
5290 * New commands
5291
5292`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5293`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5294These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5295
5296`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5297
5298You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5299scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5300prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5301executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5302
5303 * C++ improvements
5304
5305We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5306info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5307symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5308
5309Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5310
5311 * Major bug fixes
5312
5313The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5314fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5315by the compiler.
5316
5317We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5318support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5319
5320John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5321slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5322that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5323purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5324the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5325mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5326
5327Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5328about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5329completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5330we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5331
5332 * AMD 29k support
5333
5334A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5335specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5336calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5337usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5338in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5339
5340We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5341Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5342of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5343resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5344
5345 * Remote interfaces
5346
5347We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5348with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5349message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5350This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5351needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5352breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5353each instruction being stepped through.
5354
5355The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5356registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5357
5358There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5359find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5360Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5361processor with a serial port.
5362
5363 * Configuration
5364
5365Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5366`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5367supported, and what files each one uses.
5368
5369 * Library changes
5370
5371There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5372disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5373Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5374disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5375
5376The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5377Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5378can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5379grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5380
5381 * Documentation
5382
5383The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5384reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5385as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5386encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5387system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5388bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5389
5390And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5391
5392
5393*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5394
5395 * Better support for C++ function names
5396
5397GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5398names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5399(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5400single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5401Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5402
5403GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5404the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5405You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5406lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5407for the list of formats.
5408
5409 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5410
5411Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5412C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5413directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5414can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5415usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5416about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5417this problem.)
5418
5419 * New 'maintenance' command
5420
5421All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5422the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5423can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5424
5425 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5426 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5427 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5428 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5429 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5430 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5431
5432The following commands are new:
5433
5434 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5435 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5436 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5437
5438 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5439
5440We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5441(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5442be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5443read after argv processing.
5444
5445 * New hosts supported
5446
5447Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5448
55241689 5449GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5450
5451We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5452is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5453for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5454masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5455fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5456It costs extra.
5457
5458 * New targets supported
5459
5460Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5461
5462 * More smarts about finding #include files
5463
5464GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5465all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5466greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5467especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5468the one that contains your sources.
5469
5470We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5471breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5472try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5473
5474 * Interesting infernals change
5475
5476GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5477section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5478target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5479stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5480
5481 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5482
5483There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5484 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5485 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5486
5487See the ChangeLog for details.
5488
5489*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5490
5491 * New machines supported (host and target)
5492
5493IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5494
5495SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5496
5497 * New malloc package
5498
5499GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5500Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5501capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5502This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5503pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5504more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5505
5506 * info proc
5507
5508The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5509'help info proc' for details.
5510
5511 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5512
5513The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5514Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5515possible.
5516
5517 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5518
5519Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5520support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5521conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5522environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5523that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5524in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5525
5526 * Cross byte order fixes
5527
5528Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5529targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5530
5531 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5532
5533If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5534system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5535`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5536program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5537called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5538Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5539and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5540the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5541option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5542starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5543
5544You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5545the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5546information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5547slower, but makes future operations faster.
5548
5549The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5550build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5551A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5552use is:
5553
5554 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5555
5556The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5557It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5558shared across multiple host platforms.
5559
5560 * longjmp() handling
5561
5562GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5563siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5564all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5565platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5566
5567 * Solaris 2.0
5568
5569Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5570this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5571reading symbols.
5572
5573 * Bug fixes
5574
5575As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5576People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5577crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5578
5579*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5580
5581 * New machines supported (host and target)
5582
5583SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5584 (except core files)
5585BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5586Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5587
5588 * New machines supported (target)
5589
5590AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5591
5592 * C++ support
5593
5594GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5595The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5596per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5597
5598GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5599`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5600extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5601good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5602will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5603released.
5604
5605 * New features for SVR4
5606
5607GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5608shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5609only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5610
5611The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5612on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5613it prints the address mappings of the process.
5614
5615If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5616bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5617
5618 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5619
5620Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5621now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5622skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5623make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5624same code linked statically.
5625
5626 * New Getopt
5627
5628GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5629version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5630continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5631Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5632added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5633future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5634
5635 * Bugs fixed
5636
5637The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5638Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5639See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5640
5641
5642*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5643
5644 * New machines supported (host and target)
5645
5646Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5647NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5648Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5649
5650 * Almost SCO Unix support
5651
5652We had hoped to support:
5653SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5654(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5655that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5656about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5657
5658 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5659
5660GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5661debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5662is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5663send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5664reqired (if any).
5665
5666 * New Readline
5667
5668GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5669is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5670required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5671
5672 * Bugs fixed
5673
5674The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5675Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5676See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5677
5678 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5679
5680GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5681supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5682symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5683
5684Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5685mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5686debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5687mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5688version 2.
5689
5690Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5691really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5692line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5693variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5694situation somewhat.
5695
5696When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5697However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5698methods.
5699
5700We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5701DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5702encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5703
5704
5705*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5706
5707 * Improved configuration
5708
5709Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5710Porting BFD is simpler.
5711
5712 * Stepping improved
5713
5714The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5715of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5716in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5717function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5718
5719 * Bug fixing
5720
5721Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5722
5723 * New host supported (not target)
5724
5725Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5726
5727
5728*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5729
5730 * Multiple source language support
5731
5732GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5733It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5734and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5735language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5736You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5737`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5738
5739 * GDB and Modula-2
5740
5741GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5742currently under development at the State University of New York at
5743Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5744continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5745
5746Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5747debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5748symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5749
5750There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5751in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5752
5753 * set write on/off
5754
5755GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5756a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5757the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5758by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5759effect immediately.
5760
5761 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5762
5763When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5764shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5765The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5766examining core files.
5767
5768 * set listsize
5769
5770You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5771The default is 10.
5772
5773 * New machines supported (host and target)
5774
5775SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5776Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5777Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5778
5779 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5780
5781IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5782
5783 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5784
5785AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5786AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5787Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5788
5789 * New remote interfaces
5790
5791AMD 29000 Adapt
5792AMD 29000 Minimon
5793
5794
5795*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5796
5797 * New Facilities
5798
5799Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5800
5801Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5802target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5803is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5804remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5805remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5806also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5807using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5808stub on the target system.
5809
5810New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5811
5812GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5813library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5814object file types such as a.out and coff.
5815
5816There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5817refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5818
5819
5820 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5821
5822All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5823by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5824
5825For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5826``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5827Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5828
5829What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5830print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5831will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5832all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5833
5834confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5835 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5836 it is already running. Default is ON.
5837
5838editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5839 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5840 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5841 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5842 Default is ON.
5843
5844history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5845 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5846 or the value of the environment variable
5847 GDBHISTFILE.
5848
5849history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5850 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5851 HISTSIZE.
5852
5853history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5854 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5855 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5856
5857history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5858 history expansion will be performed on
5859 command line input. The default is OFF.
5860
5861radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5862 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5863 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5864
5865height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5866 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5867 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5868 variable TERM.
5869
5870width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5871 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5872 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5873 variable TERM.
5874
5875Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5876``set width'' instead.
5877
5878print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5879 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5880 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5881 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5882
5883print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5884 is OFF.
5885
5886print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5887 "raw" form if off.
5888
5889print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5890 like instructions.
5891
5892print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5893
5894
5895 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5896
5897The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5898new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5899are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5900window.
5901
5902
5903 * Support for Shared Libraries
5904
5905GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5906Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5907before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5908happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5909At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5910from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5911shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5912It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5913
5914sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5915 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5916 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5917
5918info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5919
5920
5921 * Watchpoints
5922
5923A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5924expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5925tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5926quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5927problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5928more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5929
5930watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5931
5932info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5933
5934delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5935disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5936enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5937
5938
5939 * C++ multiple inheritance
5940
5941When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5942for C++ programs.
5943
5944 * C++ exception handling
5945
5946Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5947ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5948the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5949handler's context).
5950
5951catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5952 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5953 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5954
5955info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5956 current stack frame.
5957
5958
5959 * Minor command changes
5960
5961The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5962command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5963is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5964
5965The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5966at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5967frames without printing.
5968
5969 * New directory command
5970
5971'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5972The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5973about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5974with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5975find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5976
5977 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5978
5979For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5980for more details.
5981
5982GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5983two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5984Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5985where the program that you are debugging will run.