]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git/blame - gdb/NEWS
2002-07-24 Andrew Cagney <cagney@redhat.com>
[thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 5.2:
5
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6* ``gdbserver'' now supports multithreaded applications on some targets
7
8Support for multithreaded applications using LinuxThreads has been added
9for arm*-*-linux*, i[3456]86-*-linux*, mips*-*-linux*, powerpc*-*-linux*,
10and sh*-*-linux*.
11
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12* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
13
14GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
15and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
16they expand.
17
18Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
19information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
20your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
21information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
22
23Here are the new commands for working with macros:
24
25** macro expand EXPRESSION
26
27Expand any macro invocations in expression, and show the result.
28
29** show macro MACRO-NAME
30
31Show the definition of the macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was
32defined.
33
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34* Multi-arched targets.
35
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36DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
37DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 38NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 39National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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40Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
41Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 42
cd9bfe15 43* New targets.
e33ce519 44
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45Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
46
e33ce519 47
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48* New native configurations
49
50Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 51SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 52MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 53UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 54
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55* OBSOLETE configurations and files
56
57Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
58been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
59configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
60permanently REMOVED.
61
92eb23c5 62Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 63OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7a3085c1 64Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
92eb23c5 65
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66* REMOVED configurations and files
67
68AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
69A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
70AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
71AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
72AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
73
74testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
75
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76* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
77
78This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
79commands. The default is 1024.
80
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81* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
82
83Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
84
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85* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
86
87These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
88to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
89from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 90
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91*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
92
93* New targets.
94
95Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
96
97* Bug fixes
98
99gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
100mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
101Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
102
103gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
104dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
105Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
106
107Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
108Surprisingly enough, it works now.
109By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
110
111i386 hardware watchpoint support:
112avoid misses on second run for some targets.
113By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
114
37057839 115*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 116
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117* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
118
119This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
120really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
121In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
122target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
123This can be a significant performance improvement on some
124(notably embedded) targets.
125
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126* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
127
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128This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
129process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
130GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
131hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 132
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133* New command line option
134
135GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
136
137* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
138
139There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
140command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
141a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
142be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
143open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
144issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
145a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
146it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
147GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
148is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
149
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150* Changes in ARM configurations.
151
152Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
153configuration is fully multi-arch.
154
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155* New native configurations
156
fe419ffc 157ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 158x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 159AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 160Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 161
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162* New targets
163
164Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
165
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166* OBSOLETE configurations and files
167
168Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
169been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
170configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
171permanently REMOVED.
172
173AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
174A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
175AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
176AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
177AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
178
b4ceaee6 179testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 180
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181* REMOVED configurations and files
182
183TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 184WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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185PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
186PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
187PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 188Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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189Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
190 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 191SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 192Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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193Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
194ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 195Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 196
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197* Changes to command line processing
198
199The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
200for the inferior from gdb's command line.
201
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202* Changes to key bindings
203
204There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
205
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206*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
207
208Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
209
210Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
211corrupted.
212
213Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
214
215Numerous documentation fixes.
216
217Numerous testsuite fixes.
218
34f47bc4 219*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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220
221* New native configurations
222
223Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
224x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 225MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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226MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
227ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 228s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 229
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230* New targets
231
def90278 232Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 233CRIS cris-axis
55241689 234UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 235
17e78a56 236* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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237
238x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 239Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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240Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
241 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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242TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
243WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 244Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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245PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
246PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
247PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 248SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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249Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
250ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 251Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 252
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253stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
254kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
255
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256Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
257been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
258configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
259permanently REMOVED.
260
a196c81c 261* REMOVED configurations and files
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262
263Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
264Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
265Pyramid pyramid-*-*
266ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
267Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 268ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 269
6d6b80e5 270* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 271
6d6b80e5 272GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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273sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
274present.
275
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276* Other news:
277
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278* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
279
280* The MI enabled by default.
281
282The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
283revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
284engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
285using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
286which is now deprecated.
287
288* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
289
290GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
291main features are supported:
292
293 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
294
295 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
296 extension;
297
298 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
299
300 - a Pascal expression parser.
301
302However, some important features are not yet supported.
303
304 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
305
306 - there are some problems with boolean types;
307
308 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
309 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
310
311 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
312
313 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
314
315* Changes in completion.
316
317Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
318to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
319users expect at the shell prompt.
320
321Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
322`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
323program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
324files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
325be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
326considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
327name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
328
329`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
330
331* New platform-independent commands:
332
333It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
334hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
335documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
336
337* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
338
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339Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
340revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
341many threads as your system allows you to have.
342
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343Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
344
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345Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
346multi-threaded programs though.
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347
348* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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349
350Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
351
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352GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
353debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
354supported.)
355
356* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
357
358Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
359breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
360implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
361put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
362and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
363registers.
364
365The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
366debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
367watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
368
369* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
370
371New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
372the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
373
374New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
375display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
376IDT.
377
378New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
379from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
380New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
381a given linear address.
382
383GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
384program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
385which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
386
387DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
388
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389It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
390
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391* Changes in documentation.
392
393All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
394Documentation License.
395
396Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
397manual.
398
399TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
400
401Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
402manual.
403
404The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
405documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
406hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
407
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408* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
409
410The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
411``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
412contents of this file.
413
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414* gdba.el deleted
415
416GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 417
9debab2f 418*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 419
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420* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
421
422Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
423programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
424displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
425greater level of detail.
426
427* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
428
429It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
430bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
431on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
432written.
433
434* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
435
436The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
437necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
438machines ``out of the box''.
439
440The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
441possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
442signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
443would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
444interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
445
446It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
447standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
448even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
449and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
450terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
451
452The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
453enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
454also works.
455
456DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
457GDB.
458
459It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
460directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
461times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
462breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
463
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464* New native configurations
465
466ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 467PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 468
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469* New targets
470
96baa820 471Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
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472x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
473PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
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474TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
475
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476* OBSOLETE configurations
477
478Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
479Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 480Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 481ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 482Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 483
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484Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
485but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
486these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
487be permanently REMOVED.
488
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489* Gould support removed
490
491Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
492
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493* New features for SVR4
494
495On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
496without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
497load symbols from the running process's executable file.
498
499* Many C++ enhancements
500
501C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
502in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
503
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504* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
505
506A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
507sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
508with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
509``|<program> <args>'' vis:
510
511 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
512 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
513
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514* MIPS 64 remote protocol
515
516A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
517expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
518instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
519
520The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
521added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
522
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523* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
524
525The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
526``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
527include ``set remote P-packet''.
528
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529* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
530
531The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
532accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
533``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
534
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535* ``apropos'' command added.
536
537The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
538documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
539try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
540
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541* New MI interface
542
543A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
544interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
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545process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
546"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
547enabled by configuring with:
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548
549 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
550
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551*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
552
553* New native configurations
554
555HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
556HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 557M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
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558
559* New targets
560
561Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
562Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
563Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
564
565* OBSOLETE configurations
566
567Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
568
569Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
570but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
571these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
572be permanently REMOVED.
573
574* ANSI/ISO C
575
576As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
577buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
578containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
579use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
580available. If this is not true, please report the affected
581configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
582information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
583already.
584
585* Readline 2.2
586
587GDB now uses readline 2.2.
588
589* set extension-language
590
591You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
592languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
593you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
594 set extension-language .c c++
595The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
596and their associated languages.
597
598* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
599
600When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
601you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
602PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
603
604 set processor NAME
605
606sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
607following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
608
609 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
610 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
611 403 IBM PowerPC 403
612 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
613 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
614 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
615 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
616 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
617 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
618 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
619 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
620
621At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
622special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
623registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
624only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
625
626* HP-UX support
627
628Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
629more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
630library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
631support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
632for xdb and dbx commands.
633
634* Catchpoints
635
636HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
637generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
638to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
639
640This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
641argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
642output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
643
644* Debugging across forks
645
646On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
647in the inferior.
648
649* TUI
650
651HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
652it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
653configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
654
655* GDB remote protocol additions
656
657A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
658Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
659fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
660allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
661
662For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
663full 64-bit address. The command
664
665 set remoteaddresssize 32
666
667can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
668the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
669will be discarded.
670
671In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
672command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
673
674 maint packet heythere
675
676sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
677disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
678time.
679
680The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
681target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
682downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
683
684* Tracing can collect general expressions
685
686You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
687further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
688doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
689
690* mask-address variable for Mips
691
692For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
693a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
694of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
695
696* Higher serial baud rates
697
698GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
699230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
700to achieve all of these rates.)
701
702* i960 simulator
703
704The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
705builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
706
707
708*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
709
710* New native configurations
711
712Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
713Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
714Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
715PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
716PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
717Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
718Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
719
720* New targets
721
722Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
723Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
724Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
725Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
726MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
727MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
728MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
729Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
730Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
731Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
732NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
733
734* New debugging protocols
735
736ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
737M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
738DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
739PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
740PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
741Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
742
743* DWARF 2
744
745All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
746format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
747information.
748
749* Java frontend
750
751GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
752only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
753
754* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
755
756For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
757loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
758locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
759
760* Live range splitting
761
762GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
763range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
764more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
765
766* Hurd support
767
768GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
769updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
770
771* ARM Thumb support
772
773GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
774instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
775instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
776accordingly.
777
778* MIPS16 support
779
780GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
781instruction set.
782
783* Overlay support
784
785GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
786linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
787will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
788control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
789additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
790in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
791
792* info symbol
793
794The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
795the symbol at the specified address.
796
797* Trace support
798
799The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
800asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
801extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
802includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
803file tracepoint.c for more details.
804
805* MIPS simulator
806
807Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
808by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
809of most MIPS variants.
810
811* Sparc simulator
812
813Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
814by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
815Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
816
817* set architecture
818
819For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
820basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
821architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
822the possible architectures.
823
824*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
825
826* New native configurations
827
828Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
829M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
830PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
831PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
832PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
833RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
834
835* New targets
836
837ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
838I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
839MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
840MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
841PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
842Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
843Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
844
845* PowerPC simulator
846
847The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
848contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
849PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
850basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
851performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
852
853* Solaris 2.5
854
855GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
856
857* Windows 95/NT native
858
859GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
860To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
861which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
862Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
863ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
864
865* dont-repeat command
866
867If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
868command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
869useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
870extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
871
872* Send break instead of ^C
873
874The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
875rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
876GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
877
878* Remote protocol timeout
879
880The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
881that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
882to read from the target. The default value is 2.
883
884* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
885
886By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
887loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
888stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
889when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
890in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
891
892Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
893/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
894automatically on hpux10.
895
896* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
897
898Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
899
900* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
901
902When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
903may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
904the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
905every character. The default value is 1050.
906
907* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
908
909If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
910a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
911replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
912details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
913remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
914to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
915
916* Speedups for remote debugging
917
918GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
919the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
920and more efficient S-record downloading.
921
922* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
923
924GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
925Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
926
927*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
928
929* Psymtabs for XCOFF
930
931The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
932can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
933
934* Remote targets use caching
935
936Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
937remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
938it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
939debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
940off' turns the the data cache off.
941
942* Remote targets may have threads
943
944The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
945in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
946gdb/remote.c for details.
947
948* NetROM support
949
950If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
951support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
952acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
953write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
954support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
955another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
956sequence is something like
957
958 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
959 load <prog>
960 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
961
962* Macintosh host
963
964GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
965may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
966it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
967available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
968device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
969directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
970scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
971mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
972
973* Autoconf
974
975GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
976but does simplify configuration and building.
977
978* hpux10
979
980GDB now supports hpux10.
981
982*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
983
984* New native configurations
985
986x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
987x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
988NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
989Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
990
991* New targets
992
993A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
994HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
995CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
996PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
997WDC 65816 w65-*-*
998
999* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1000
1001GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1002possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1003filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1004the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1005if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1006
1007* Arguments to user-defined commands
1008
1009User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1010Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1011trivial example:
1012define adder
1013 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1014
1015To execute the command use:
1016adder 1 2 3
1017
1018Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1019Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1020use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1021
1022* New `if' and `while' commands
1023
1024This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1025commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1026expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1027execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1028terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1029`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1030if the expression is zero.
1031
1032* Fortran source language mode
1033
1034GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1035Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1036variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1037with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1038Fortran compilers.
1039
1040* Better HPUX support
1041
1042Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1043running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1044processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1045for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1046that behavior do the following before running the program:
1047
1048 adb -w a.out
1049 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1050 control-d
1051
1052This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1053To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1054
1055 adb -w a.out
1056 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1057 control-d
1058
1059You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1060the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1061external linkage.
1062
1063GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1064HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1065
1066* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1067
1068You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1069commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1070current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1071"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1072associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1073configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1074
1075* New DOS host serial code
1076
1077This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1078no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1079a PC's serial port.
1080
1081*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1082
1083* New "complete" command
1084
1085This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1086were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1087
1088* Trailing space optional in prompt
1089
1090"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1091allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1092
1093* Breakpoint hit counts
1094
1095"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1096has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1097can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1098to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1099less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1100that breakpoint.
1101
1102* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1103
1104"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1105an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1106arrays actually contain only short strings.
1107
1108* Shared library breakpoints
1109
1110In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1111breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1112
1113* Hardware watchpoints
1114
1115There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1116targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1117
55241689 1118Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1119
1120* Annotations
1121
1122Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1123and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1124
1125* Improved Irix 5 support
1126
1127GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1128
1129* Improved HPPA support
1130
1131GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1132
1133* New native configurations
1134
1135Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1136HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1137Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1138RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1139
1140* New targets
1141
1142OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1143MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1144Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1145
1146* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1147
1148There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1149This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1150
1151* Fixes
1152
1153As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1154and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1155
1156*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1157
1158* Irix 5 is now supported
1159
1160* HPPA support
1161
1162GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1163to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1164GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1165of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1166can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1167
1168
1169*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1170
1171* User visible changes:
1172
1173* Remote Debugging
1174
1175The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1176target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1177debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1178integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1179debugging info for the mips target).
1180
1181* DEC Alpha native support
1182
1183GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1184debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1185work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1186Alpha-specific notes.
1187
1188* Preliminary thread implementation
1189
1190GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1191
1192* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1193
1194This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1195to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1196for details).
1197
1198* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1199
1200This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1201mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1202call methods, ...etc.
1203
1204*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1205
1206 * User visible changes:
1207
1208Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1209supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1210other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1211somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1212
1213Filename completion now works.
1214
1215When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1216arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1217addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1218
1219All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1220vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1221should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1222your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1223to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1224
1225 * DEC alpha support
1226
1227This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1228cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1229
1230
1231*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1232
1233 * Testsuite
1234
1235This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1236The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1237via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1238
1239 * C++ demangling
1240
1241'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1242emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1243Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1244disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1245use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1246
1247 * Simulators
1248
1249GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1250So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1251Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1252
1253 * New targets supported
1254
1255H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1256H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1257SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1258Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1259IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1260
1261Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1262version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1263GO32 memory extender.
1264
1265 * New remote protocols
1266
1267MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1268
1269 * New source languages supported
1270
1271This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1272used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1273into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1274
1275
1276*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1277
1278 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1279
1280GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1281version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1282University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1283compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1284format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1285(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1286
1287Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1288
1289 * Faster and better demangling
1290
1291We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1292demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1293character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1294only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1295This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1296increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1297symbol lookups.
1298
1299`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1300from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1301compiler does not actually implement.
1302
1303 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1304
1305In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1306inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1307recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1308very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1309The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1310circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1311fix.
1312
1313The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1314release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1315
1316 * Improved configure script
1317
1318The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1319you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1320host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1321done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1322
1323We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1324version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1325`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1326The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1327only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1328We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1329
1330 * Documentation improvements
1331
1332There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1333produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1334before submitting changes.
1335
1336The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1337M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1338`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1339you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1340a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1341
1342*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1343We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1344been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1345or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1346`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1347around this problem.
1348
1349 * New features
1350
1351GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1352the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1353`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1354the target program.
1355
1356The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1357how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1358
1359 * New native hosts supported
1360
1361HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1362386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1363
1364 * New targets supported
1365
1366AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1367
1368 * New file formats supported
1369
1370BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1371HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1372
1373 * Major bug fixes
1374
1375Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1376
1377We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1378printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1379
1380We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1381for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1382release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1383
1384You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1385will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1386
1387We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1388for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1389especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1390libraries.
1391
1392The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1393information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1394command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1395any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1396when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1397
1398 * Internal improvements
1399
1400GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1401debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1402
1403GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1404Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1405symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1406contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1407shared code that handles any of them.
1408
1409 * New command line options
1410
1411We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1412
1413 * Mmalloc licensing
1414
1415The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1416General Public License.
1417
1418*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1419
1420 * Host/native/target split
1421
1422GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1423hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1424target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1425local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1426ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1427
1428The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1429GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1430is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1431code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1432any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1433built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1434handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1435
1436GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1437It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1438plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1439
1440 * New hosts supported
1441
1442HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1443386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1444386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1445
1446 * New targets supported
1447
1448Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
144968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1450
1451 * New native hosts supported
1452
1453386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1454 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1455386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1456
1457 * New file formats supported
1458
1459BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1460supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1461format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1462
1463 * New commands
1464
1465`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1466`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1467These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1468
1469`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1470
1471You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1472scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1473prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1474executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1475
1476 * C++ improvements
1477
1478We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1479info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1480symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1481
1482Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1483
1484 * Major bug fixes
1485
1486The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1487fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1488by the compiler.
1489
1490We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1491support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1492
1493John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1494slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1495that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1496purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1497the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1498mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1499
1500Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1501about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1502completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1503we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1504
1505 * AMD 29k support
1506
1507A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1508specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1509calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1510usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1511in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1512
1513We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1514Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1515of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1516resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1517
1518 * Remote interfaces
1519
1520We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1521with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1522message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1523This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1524needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1525breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1526each instruction being stepped through.
1527
1528The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1529registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1530
1531There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1532find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1533Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1534processor with a serial port.
1535
1536 * Configuration
1537
1538Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1539`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1540supported, and what files each one uses.
1541
1542 * Library changes
1543
1544There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1545disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1546Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1547disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1548
1549The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1550Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1551can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1552grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1553
1554 * Documentation
1555
1556The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1557reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1558as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1559encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1560system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1561bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1562
1563And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1564
1565
1566*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1567
1568 * Better support for C++ function names
1569
1570GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1571names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1572(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1573single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1574Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1575
1576GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1577the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1578You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1579lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1580for the list of formats.
1581
1582 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1583
1584Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1585C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1586directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1587can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1588usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1589about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1590this problem.)
1591
1592 * New 'maintenance' command
1593
1594All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1595the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1596can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1597
1598 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1599 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1600 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1601 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1602 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1603 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1604
1605The following commands are new:
1606
1607 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1608 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1609 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1610
1611 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1612
1613We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1614(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1615be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1616read after argv processing.
1617
1618 * New hosts supported
1619
1620Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1621
55241689 1622GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1623
1624We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1625is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1626for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1627masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1628fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1629It costs extra.
1630
1631 * New targets supported
1632
1633Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1634
1635 * More smarts about finding #include files
1636
1637GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1638all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1639greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1640especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1641the one that contains your sources.
1642
1643We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1644breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1645try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1646
1647 * Interesting infernals change
1648
1649GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1650section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1651target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1652stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1653
1654 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1655
1656There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1657 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1658 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1659
1660See the ChangeLog for details.
1661
1662*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1663
1664 * New machines supported (host and target)
1665
1666IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1667
1668SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1669
1670 * New malloc package
1671
1672GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1673Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1674capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1675This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1676pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1677more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1678
1679 * info proc
1680
1681The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1682'help info proc' for details.
1683
1684 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1685
1686The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1687Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1688possible.
1689
1690 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1691
1692Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1693support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1694conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1695environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1696that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1697in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1698
1699 * Cross byte order fixes
1700
1701Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1702targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1703
1704 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1705
1706If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1707system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1708`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1709program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1710called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1711Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1712and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1713the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1714option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1715starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1716
1717You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1718the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1719information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1720slower, but makes future operations faster.
1721
1722The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1723build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1724A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1725use is:
1726
1727 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1728
1729The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1730It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1731shared across multiple host platforms.
1732
1733 * longjmp() handling
1734
1735GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1736siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1737all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1738platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1739
1740 * Solaris 2.0
1741
1742Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1743this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1744reading symbols.
1745
1746 * Bug fixes
1747
1748As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1749People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1750crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1751
1752*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1753
1754 * New machines supported (host and target)
1755
1756SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1757 (except core files)
1758BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1759Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1760
1761 * New machines supported (target)
1762
1763AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1764
1765 * C++ support
1766
1767GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1768The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1769per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1770
1771GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1772`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1773extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1774good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1775will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1776released.
1777
1778 * New features for SVR4
1779
1780GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1781shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1782only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1783
1784The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1785on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1786it prints the address mappings of the process.
1787
1788If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1789bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1790
1791 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1792
1793Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1794now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1795skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1796make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1797same code linked statically.
1798
1799 * New Getopt
1800
1801GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1802version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1803continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1804Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1805added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1806future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1807
1808 * Bugs fixed
1809
1810The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1811Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1812See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1813
1814
1815*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1816
1817 * New machines supported (host and target)
1818
1819Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1820NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1821Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1822
1823 * Almost SCO Unix support
1824
1825We had hoped to support:
1826SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1827(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1828that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1829about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1830
1831 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1832
1833GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1834debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1835is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1836send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1837reqired (if any).
1838
1839 * New Readline
1840
1841GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1842is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1843required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1844
1845 * Bugs fixed
1846
1847The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1848Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1849See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1850
1851 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1852
1853GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1854supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1855symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1856
1857Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1858mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1859debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1860mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1861version 2.
1862
1863Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1864really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1865line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1866variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1867situation somewhat.
1868
1869When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1870However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1871methods.
1872
1873We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1874DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1875encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1876
1877
1878*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1879
1880 * Improved configuration
1881
1882Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1883Porting BFD is simpler.
1884
1885 * Stepping improved
1886
1887The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1888of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1889in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1890function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1891
1892 * Bug fixing
1893
1894Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1895
1896 * New host supported (not target)
1897
1898Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1899
1900
1901*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1902
1903 * Multiple source language support
1904
1905GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1906It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1907and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1908language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1909You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1910`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1911
1912 * GDB and Modula-2
1913
1914GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1915currently under development at the State University of New York at
1916Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1917continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1918
1919Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1920debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1921symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1922
1923There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1924in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1925
1926 * set write on/off
1927
1928GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1929a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1930the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1931by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1932effect immediately.
1933
1934 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1935
1936When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1937shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1938The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1939examining core files.
1940
1941 * set listsize
1942
1943You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1944The default is 10.
1945
1946 * New machines supported (host and target)
1947
1948SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1949Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1950Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1951
1952 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1953
1954IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1955
1956 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1957
1958AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1959AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1960Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1961
1962 * New remote interfaces
1963
1964AMD 29000 Adapt
1965AMD 29000 Minimon
1966
1967
1968*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1969
1970 * New Facilities
1971
1972Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1973
1974Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1975target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1976is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1977remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1978remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1979also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1980using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1981stub on the target system.
1982
1983New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1984
1985GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1986library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1987object file types such as a.out and coff.
1988
1989There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1990refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1991
1992
1993 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1994
1995All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1996by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1997
1998For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1999``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2000Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2001
2002What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2003print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2004will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2005all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2006
2007confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2008 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2009 it is already running. Default is ON.
2010
2011editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2012 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2013 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2014 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2015 Default is ON.
2016
2017history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2018 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2019 or the value of the environment variable
2020 GDBHISTFILE.
2021
2022history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2023 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2024 HISTSIZE.
2025
2026history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2027 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2028 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2029
2030history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2031 history expansion will be performed on
2032 command line input. The default is OFF.
2033
2034radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2035 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2036 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2037
2038height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2039 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2040 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2041 variable TERM.
2042
2043width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2044 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2045 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2046 variable TERM.
2047
2048Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2049``set width'' instead.
2050
2051print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2052 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2053 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2054 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2055
2056print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2057 is OFF.
2058
2059print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2060 "raw" form if off.
2061
2062print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2063 like instructions.
2064
2065print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2066
2067
2068 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2069
2070The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2071new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2072are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2073window.
2074
2075
2076 * Support for Shared Libraries
2077
2078GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2079Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2080before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2081happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2082At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2083from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2084shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2085It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2086
2087sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2088 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2089 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2090
2091info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2092
2093
2094 * Watchpoints
2095
2096A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2097expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2098tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2099quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2100problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2101more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2102
2103watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2104
2105info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2106
2107delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2108disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2109enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2110
2111
2112 * C++ multiple inheritance
2113
2114When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2115for C++ programs.
2116
2117 * C++ exception handling
2118
2119Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2120ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2121the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2122handler's context).
2123
2124catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2125 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2126 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2127
2128info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2129 current stack frame.
2130
2131
2132 * Minor command changes
2133
2134The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2135command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2136is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2137
2138The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2139at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2140frames without printing.
2141
2142 * New directory command
2143
2144'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2145The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2146about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2147with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2148find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2149
2150 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2151
2152For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2153for more details.
2154
2155GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2156two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2157Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2158where the program that you are debugging will run.