]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git/blame - gdb/NEWS
gdb
[thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
SS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
75feb17d
DJ
4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
f1838a98
UW
6* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
10
7f6a6314
PM
11* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12now complete on file names.
13
65d12d83
TT
14* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16For instance, consider:
17
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
20 (gdb) p variable.
21
22If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23completions will be "f1" and "f2".
24
08388c79
DE
25* New remote packets
26
27qSearch:memory:
28 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
29
a6f3e723
SL
30QStartNoAckMode
31 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
32 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
33 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
34
060871df
PA
35* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
36
37 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
38 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
39 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
40
d14508fe
DE
41* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
42source+assembly.
43
c055b101 44* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 45DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
46
47* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
48and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
49`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 50
31fffb02
CS
51* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
52with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
53
88d8a8e0
JB
54* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
55
ccd213ac
DJ
56* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
57which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
58
1fddbabb 59* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 60list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 61
a0ef4274
DJ
62* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
63conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
64have also been fixed.
65
bfb8797a 66* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
67From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
68are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 69
ccd213ac
DJ
70* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
71
72 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
73 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
74
7ae0e2a2
UW
75 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
76 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
77 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
78
a6f3e723
SL
79 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
80 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
81
d57a3c85
TJB
82* Python scripting
83
84 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
85 available is determined at configure time.
86
75feb17d
DJ
87* New commands
88
08388c79
DE
89find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
90 val1 [, val2, ...]
91 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
92
d57a3c85
TJB
93maint set python print-stack
94maint show python print-stack
95 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
96
97python [CODE]
98 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
99
bf250677
DE
100set print symbol-loading
101show print symbol-loading
102 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
103
e0a3ce09 104set debug timestamp
75feb17d
DJ
105show debug timestamp
106 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
107
ccd213ac
DJ
108set exec-wrapper
109show exec-wrapper
110unset exec-wrapper
111 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 112
aad4b048
JB
113set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
114show multiple-symbols
115 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
116 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
117 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
118
74960c60
VP
119set breakpoint always-inserted
120show breakpoint always-inserted
121 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
122 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
123 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
124
0428b8f5
DJ
125set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
126show arm fallback-mode
127set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
128show arm force-mode
129 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
130 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
131 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
132 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
133
10568435
JK
134set disable-randomization
135show disable-randomization
136 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
137 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
138 multiple debugging sessions.
139
b3eb342c
VP
140set target-async
141 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
142 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
143 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
144 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
145
d7d9f01e
TT
146macro define
147macro list
148macro undef
149 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
150 interactively.
151
75a2d5e7
TT
152* New targets
153
154x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
155
75feb17d 156*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 157
af5ca30d
NH
158* New native configurations
159
160NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 161Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
162
163* New targets
164
165NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 166Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 167
7a404eba
PA
168* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
169
170 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
171 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
172 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
173 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
174
430ebac9
PA
175* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
176(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
177
fe6fbf8b 178* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 179is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
180
181* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
182including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
183and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 184
10665d76
JB
185* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
186accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
187more than one contiguous range of addresses.
188
7cc46491
DJ
189* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
190
d71340b8
DJ
191* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
192registers on PowerPC targets.
193
523c4513
DJ
194* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
195targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
196
a6b151f1
DJ
197* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
198commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
199
2d717e4f
DJ
200* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
201extended-remote mode.
202
24a836bd 203* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
204The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
205error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
206The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 207
d0c678e6
UW
208* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
209building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
210target architectures.
211
d64a946d
TJB
212* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
213Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
214now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
215stored in two consecutive float registers.
216
ee163bf5
VP
217* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
218breakpoints now.
219
b93b6ca7 220* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
221Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
222include:
b93b6ca7
JB
223 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
224 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
225 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
226 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
227 of an assignment
228 - Improved command completion in Ada
229 - Several bug fixes
230
d001be7a
DJ
231* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
232process.
233
a6b151f1
DJ
234* New commands
235
6d53d0af
JB
236set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
237show print frame-arguments
238 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
239 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
240
a6b151f1
DJ
241remote put
242remote get
243remote delete
244 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
245
246* New MI commands
247
248-target-file-put
249-target-file-get
250-target-file-delete
251 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
252
253* New remote packets
254
255vFile:open:
256vFile:close:
257vFile:pread:
258vFile:pwrite:
259vFile:unlink:
260 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 261
2d717e4f
DJ
262vAttach
263 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
264 mode.
265
266vRun
267 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
268
8d5f9c6f 269*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 270
19d378fc
MS
271* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
272bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
273Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
274
3a40aaa0
UW
275* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
276symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
277-Bsymbolic linker option.
278
a6ec25f2
BW
279* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
280recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
281is not supported.
282
6dd09645
JB
283* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
284frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
285
c9bb8148
DJ
286* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
28732-bit or 64-bit register values.
288
0d5de010
DJ
289* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
290
23181151
DJ
291* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
292target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
293a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
294
ea37ba09
DJ
295* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
296automatically displayed as character or string data.
297
298* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
299arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
300as strings.
e1f48ead 301
123dc839
DJ
302* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
303for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 304only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 305
05a4558a
DJ
306* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
307iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 308
7c963485
PA
309* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
310ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
311has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
312
b18be20d
DJ
313* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
314
0ca420ce
UW
315* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
316
31d99776
DJ
317* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
318layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
319segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
320
a4642986
MR
321* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
322immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
323
cfa9d6d9
DJ
324* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
325"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
326packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
327where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
328Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
329
330* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
331(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
332
333* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
334according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 335
c9bb8148
DJ
336* New commands
337
23776285
MR
338set remoteflow
339show remoteflow
340 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
341 when debugging using remote targets.
342
c9bb8148
DJ
343set mem inaccessible-by-default
344show mem inaccessible-by-default
345 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
346 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
347 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
348 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
349 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
350
351set breakpoint auto-hw
352show breakpoint auto-hw
353 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
354 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
355 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
356 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
357 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
358 including "next" and "finish".
359
0e420bd8
JB
360catch exception
361catch exception unhandled
362 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
363
364catch assert
365 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
366
f822c95b
DJ
367set sysroot
368show sysroot
369 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
370 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
371 an alias to "set sysroot".
372
83cc5c53
UW
373info spu
374 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
375 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
376 architecture.
377
bd372731
MK
378* New native configurations
379
380OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
381
23181151
DJ
382set tdesc filename
383unset tdesc filename
384show tdesc filename
385 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
386 not query the target for its built-in description.
387
c9bb8148
DJ
388* New targets
389
54fe9172 390OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 391MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 392Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 393
6dd09645
JB
394* New remote packets
395
396QPassSignals:
397 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
398 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
399
23181151
DJ
400qXfer:features:read:
401 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
402 features.
6dd09645 403
83cc5c53
UW
404qXfer:spu:read:
405qXfer:spu:write:
406 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
407 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
408
cfa9d6d9
DJ
409qXfer:libraries:read:
410 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
411 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
412 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
413 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
414
483367ee
DJ
415* Removed targets
416
417Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
418
d08950c4
UW
419alpha*-*-osf1*
420alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 421d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
422hppa*-*-hiux*
423i[34567]86-ncr-*
424i[34567]86-*-dgux*
425i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
426i[34567]86-*-netware*
427i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
428i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
429i[34567]86-*-sco*
430i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
431i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
432i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
433i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
434i[34567]86-*-unixware*
435i[34567]86-*-sysv*
436i[34567]86-*-isc*
437m68*-cisco*-*
438m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 439mips*-*-pe
483367ee 440rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 441sh*-*-pe
483367ee 442
7ce59000
DJ
443* Other removed features
444
445target abug
446target cpu32bug
447target est
448target rom68k
449
450 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
451
ea35711c
DJ
452target hms
453target e7000
454target sh3
455target sh3e
456
457 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
458 H8/300.
459
460target ocd
461
462 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
463 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
464 interfaces.
465
7ce59000
DJ
466DWARF 1 support
467
468 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
469 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
470
54d61198
DJ
471Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
472
473 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
474 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
475 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
476 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
477
ea35711c
DJ
478MIPS ".pdr" sections
479
480 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
481 in debugging information.
482
483Scheme support
484
485 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
486 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
487
1a69e1e4
DJ
488set mips stack-arg-size
489set mips saved-gpreg-size
490
491 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
492
6dd09645 493*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 494
ca3bf3bd
DJ
495* New targets
496
497Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 498Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 499
6aec2e11
DJ
500* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
501(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
502running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
503
504* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
505Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
506supported.
507
17218d91
DJ
508* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
509broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
510
9ebce043
DJ
511* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
512stub provides the required support.
513
7d3d3ece
DJ
514* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
515longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
516
4f8253f3
JB
517* New commands
518
519set substitute-path
520unset substitute-path
521show substitute-path
522 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
523 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
524 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
525 between compilation and debugging.
526
9fa66fd7
AS
527set trace-commands
528show trace-commands
529 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
530 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
531 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
532
1f5befc1
DJ
533* REMOVED features
534
535The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
536
2ec3381a
DJ
537Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
538an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
539
3d00d119
DJ
540The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
541
be2a5f71
DJ
542* New remote packets
543
544qSupported:
545 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
546 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
547 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
548 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
549 target.
550
0876f84a
DJ
551qXfer:auxv:read:
552 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
553 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
554
9ebce043
DJ
555qXfer:memory-map:read:
556 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
557 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
558
559vFlashErase:
560vFlashWrite:
561vFlashDone:
562 Erase and program a flash memory device.
563
0876f84a
DJ
564* Removed remote packets
565
566qPart:auxv:read:
567 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
568 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
569
e374b601 570*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 571
96309189
MS
572* New targets
573
574Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
575
576Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
577
53e5f3cf
AS
578* New commands
579
580init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
581 only if it doesn't already have a value.
582
ac264b3b
MS
583The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
584
585checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
586
587restart <n> Return the program state to a
588 previously saved state.
589
590info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
591
592delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
593
594set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
595 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
596
597info forks List forks of the user program that
598 are available to be debugged.
599
600fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
601 forks of the user program that are
602 available to be debugged.
603
604delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
605 that are available to be debugged (and
606 kill the forked process).
607
608detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
609 that are available to be debugged (and
610 allow the process to continue).
611
3950dc3f
NS
612* New architecture
613
614Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
615
0ea3f30e
DJ
616* Improved Windows host support
617
618GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
619native console support, and remote communications using either
620network sockets or serial ports.
621
f79daebb
GM
622* Improved Modula-2 language support
623
624GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
625basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
626pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
627printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
628written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
629GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
630
acab6ab2
MM
631* REMOVED features
632
633The ARM rdi-share module.
634
f4267320
DJ
635The Netware NLM debug server.
636
53e5f3cf 637*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 638
e0ecbda1
MK
639* New native configurations
640
02a677ac 641OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
642OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
643
d64a6579
KB
644* New targets
645
646Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
647
b33a6190
AS
648* New command line options
649
650--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
651--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
652 the child (debugged) program exited with.
653--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
654 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
655 specified multiple times and in conjunction
656 with the --command (-x) option.
657
11dced61
AC
658* Deprecated commands removed
659
660The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
661removed:
662
663 Command Replacement
664 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
665 othernames set arm disassembler
666 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
667 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
668 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
669 regs info registers
670
6fe85783
MK
671* New BSD user-level threads support
672
673It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
674library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
675configurations are:
676
677FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
678FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
679OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
680
681Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
682are not yet supported.
683
5260ca71
MS
684* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
685(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
686
e84ecc99
AC
687* REMOVED configurations and files
688
689VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 690Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 691National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 692
31e35378
JB
693* New "set print array-indexes" command
694
695After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
696when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
697behavior.
698
e85e5c83
MK
699* VAX floating point support
700
701GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
702
d91e9901
AS
703* User-defined command support
704
705In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
706to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
707section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
708
f2cb65ca
MC
709*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
710
f47b1503
AS
711* New command line option
712
713GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
714debugging.
715
f2cb65ca
MC
716* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
717
718GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
719information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
720by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
721proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
722to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 723
d08c0230
AC
724* Internationalization
725
726When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
727internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
728continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
729
117ea3cf
PH
730* Ada
731
732Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
733implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
734into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
735
d08c0230
AC
736* New native configurations
737
738GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
739
740* Remote 'p' packet
741
742GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
743packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
744
745* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
746
747GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
748The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
749features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
750i386 application).
751
752GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
753compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
754continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
755configurations:
756
757hppa-*-hpux
758ia64-*-aix
759mips-*-irix*
760*-*-lynx
761mips-*-linux-gnu
762sds protocol
763xdr protocol
764powerpc bdm protocol
765
766Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
767made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
768
769* OBSOLETE configurations and files
770
771Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
772been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
773configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
774permanently REMOVED.
775
776h8300-*-*
777mcore-*-*
778mn10300-*-*
779ns32k-*-*
780sh64-*-*
781v850-*-*
782
ebb7c577
AC
783*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
784
785* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
786
787When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
788heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
789been fixed.
790
791* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
792
793When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
794fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
795IRIX long double values).
796
797* VAX and "next"
798
799A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
800command. This problem has been fixed.
801
860660cb 802*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 803
0dea2468
AC
804* Fix for ``many threads''
805
806On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
807rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
808error message:
809
810 ptrace: No such process.
811 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
812
813This problem has been fixed.
814
2c07db7a
AC
815* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
816
817Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
818GDB to dump core).
819
c23968a2
JB
820* New ``start'' command.
821
822This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
823
71009278
MK
824* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
825
826Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
827live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
828platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
829
830FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
831FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
832NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
833NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
834NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
835OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
836OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
837OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
838OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
839
3c0b7db2
AC
840* Signal trampoline code overhauled
841
842Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
843These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
844of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
845call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
846signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
847
73cc75f3
AC
848Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
849features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
850include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 851
7243600a
BF
852* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
853
6f606e1c
MK
854* New native configurations
855
97dc871c 856GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 857OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
858OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
859OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 860OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 861NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 862OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 863
a1b461bf
AC
864* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
865
866GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
867The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
868including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
869migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
870compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
871work, was also included.
872
873GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
874module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
875
876h8300-*-*
877mcore-*-*
878mn10300-*-*
879ns32k-*-*
880sh64-*-*
881v850-*-*
882xstormy16-*-*
883
884Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
885made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
886
3c7012f5
AC
887* REMOVED configurations and files
888
889Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
890Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
891Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
892Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
893Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
894AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
895Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
896decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
897riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
898sonymips mips-sony-*
899sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
900
e5fe55f7
AC
901*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
902
903* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
904
905The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
906GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
907command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
908program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
909with GDB".
910
911* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
912
913Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
914libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
915cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
916GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
917shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
918the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
919are created.
920
921Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
922
923* Fixed ISO-C build problems
924
925The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
926non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
927compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
928
929* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
930
931Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
932wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
933
934* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
935
936The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
937permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
938systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
939
940* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
941
942Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
943has been updated to use constant array sizes.
944
945* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
946
947GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
948its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
949panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
950
951* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
952
953When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
954by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
955not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
956
faae5abe 957*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 958
9175c9a3
MC
959* Removed --with-mmalloc
960
961Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
962conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
963
3cc87ec0
MK
964* Changes in AMD64 configurations
965
966The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
967the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
968and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
969you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
970
f0424ef6
MK
971* Revised SPARC target
972
973The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
974FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
975support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
976from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
977(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 978
59659be2
ILT
979* New C++ demangler
980
981GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
982names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
983with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
984programs.
985
9e08b29b
DJ
986* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
987
988GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
989arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
990encountered these.
991
8dfe8985
DC
992* C++ nested types and namespaces
993
994GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
995improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
996is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
997Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
998namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
999"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1000frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1001if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1002GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1003
cced5e27
MK
1004* New native configurations
1005
1006NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1007OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1008OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1009OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1010OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1011
b4b4b794
KI
1012* New debugging protocols
1013
1014M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1015
7989c619
AC
1016* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1017
1018The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1019and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1020tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1021
5994185b
AC
1022* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1023
1024Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1025been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1026configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1027permanently REMOVED.
1028
1029Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1030Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1031Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1032Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1033Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1034AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1035Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1036decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1037riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1038sonymips mips-sony-*
1039sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1040
0ddabb4c
AC
1041* REMOVED configurations and files
1042
1043SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1044SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1045Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1046Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1047H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1048HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1049HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1050HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1051PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1052386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1053Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1054 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1055 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1056SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1057SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1058Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1059Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1060
c7f1390e
DJ
1061*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1062
1fe43d45
AC
1063* Objective-C
1064
1065Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1066integrated into GDB.
1067
e6beb428
AC
1068* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1069
1070DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1071information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1072By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1073backtraces.
1074
1075The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1076have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1077DWARF 2 CFI support.
1078
1079* Hosted file I/O.
1080
1081GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1082file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1083remote protocol documentation for details.
1084
1085* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1086
1087All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1088architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1089to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1090ppc32 on ppc64).
1091
1092* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1093
1094GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1095per-thread variables.
1096
1097* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1098
1099GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1100GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1101
1102* Separate debug info.
1103
1104GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1105automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1106of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1107system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1108and optional debug files.
1109
1110* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1111
1112DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1113describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1114debugger.
1115
1116GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1117for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1118
1119* Java
1120
1121A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1122Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1123considered "useable".
1124
85f8f974
DJ
1125* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1126
1127The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1128commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1129kernel.
1130
0fac0b41
DJ
1131* GDB supports logging output to a file
1132
1133There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1134used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1135
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1136* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1137
1138The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1139disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1140command.
1141
e286caf2 1142* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1143
1144The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1145registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1146
d28f9cdf
DJ
1147* Profiling support
1148
1149A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1150be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1151session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1152"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1153data, for more informative profiling results.
1154
da0f9dcd
AC
1155* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1156
1157The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1158option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1159"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1160
1161Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1162removed.
1163
fb9b6b35
JJ
1164Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1165Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1166Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1167 in a subsequent -var-update.
1168
954a4db8
MK
1169* New native configurations.
1170
1171FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1172
6760f9e6
JB
1173* Multi-arched targets.
1174
b4263afa 1175HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1176Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1177
1b831c93
AC
1178* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1179
1180Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1181been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1182configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1183permanently REMOVED.
1184
8b0e5691 1185Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1186Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1187H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1188HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1189HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1190HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1191PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1192Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1193 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1194 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1195Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1196Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1197
5835abe7
NC
1198* REMOVED configurations and files
1199
1200V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1201Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1202IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1203i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1204i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1205i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1206HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1207 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1208 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1209Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1210Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1211Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1212OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1213I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1214
a094c6fb
AC
1215* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1216
1217The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1218the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1219context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1220address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1221The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1222
299ffc64 1223*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1224
46248966
AC
1225* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1226
1227When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1228`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1229in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1230library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1231shared libs like mad''.
1232
b9d14705 1233* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1234
b9d14705
DJ
1235Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1236the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1237arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1238powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1239
e0e9281e
JB
1240* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1241
1242GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1243and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1244they expand.
1245
dd73b9bb
AC
1246The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1247invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1248
1249The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1250macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1251
e0e9281e
JB
1252Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1253information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1254your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1255information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1256
2250ee0c
CV
1257* Multi-arched targets.
1258
6e3ba3b8
JT
1259DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1260DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1261NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1262National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1263Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1264Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1265
cd9bfe15 1266* New targets.
e33ce519 1267
456f8b9d
DB
1268Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1269
e33ce519 1270
da8ca43d
JT
1271* New native configurations
1272
1273Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1274SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1275MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1276UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1277
cd9bfe15
AC
1278* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1279
1280Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1281been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1282configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1283permanently REMOVED.
1284
92eb23c5 1285Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1286OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1287IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1288Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1289Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1290Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1291i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1292i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1293i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1294HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1295 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1296 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1297I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1298
db034ac5
AC
1299* OBSOLETE languages
1300
1301CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1302
cd9bfe15
AC
1303* REMOVED configurations and files
1304
1305AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1306A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1307AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1308AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1309AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1310
1311testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1312
20f01a46
DH
1313* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1314
1315This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1316commands. The default is 1024.
1317
a5941fbf
MK
1318* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1319
1320Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1321
89743e04
MS
1322* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1323
1324These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1325to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1326from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1327
9fb14e79
JB
1328* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1329
1330The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1331including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1332of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1333
2037aebb
AC
1334*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1335
1336* New targets.
1337
1338Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1339
1340* Bug fixes
1341
1342gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1343mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1344Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1345
1346gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1347dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1348Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1349
1350Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1351Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1352By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1353
1354i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1355avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1356By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1357
37057839 1358*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1359
1a703748
MS
1360* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1361
1362This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1363really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1364In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1365target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1366This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1367(notably embedded) targets.
1368
cefd4ef5
MS
1369* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1370
55241689
AC
1371This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1372process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1373GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1374hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1375
352ed7b4
MS
1376* New command line option
1377
1378GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1379
1380* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1381
1382There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1383command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1384a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1385be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1386open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1387issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1388a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1389it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1390GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1391is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1392
fe419ffc
RE
1393* Changes in ARM configurations.
1394
1395Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1396configuration is fully multi-arch.
1397
eb7cedd9
MK
1398* New native configurations
1399
fe419ffc 1400ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1401x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1402AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1403Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1404
c9f63e6b
CV
1405* New targets
1406
1407Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1408
9b4ff276
AC
1409* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1410
1411Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1412been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1413configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1414permanently REMOVED.
1415
1416AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1417A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1418AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1419AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1420AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1421
b4ceaee6 1422testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1423
e2caac18
AC
1424* REMOVED configurations and files
1425
1426TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1427WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1428PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1429PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1430PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1431Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1432Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1433 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1434SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1435Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1436Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1437ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1438Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1439
c2a727fa
TT
1440* Changes to command line processing
1441
1442The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1443for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1444
467d8519
TT
1445* Changes to key bindings
1446
1447There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1448
7072a954
AC
1449*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1450
1451Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1452
1453Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1454corrupted.
1455
1456Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1457
1458Numerous documentation fixes.
1459
1460Numerous testsuite fixes.
1461
34f47bc4 1462*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1463
1464* New native configurations
1465
1466Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1467x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1468MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1469MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1470ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1471s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1472
bf64bfd6
AC
1473* New targets
1474
def90278 1475Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1476CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1477UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1478
17e78a56 1479* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1480
1481x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1482Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1483Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1484 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1485TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1486WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1487Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1488PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1489PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1490PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1491SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1492Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1493ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1494Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1495
17e78a56
AC
1496stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1497kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1498
7fcca85b
AC
1499Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1500been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1501configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1502permanently REMOVED.
1503
a196c81c 1504* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1505
1506Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1507Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1508Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1509ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1510Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1511ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1512
6d6b80e5 1513* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1514
6d6b80e5 1515GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1516sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1517present.
1518
bf64bfd6
AC
1519* Other news:
1520
e23194cb
EZ
1521* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1522
1523* The MI enabled by default.
1524
1525The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1526revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1527engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1528using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1529which is now deprecated.
1530
1531* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1532
1533GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1534main features are supported:
1535
1536 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1537
1538 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1539 extension;
1540
1541 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1542
1543 - a Pascal expression parser.
1544
1545However, some important features are not yet supported.
1546
1547 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1548
1549 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1550
1551 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1552 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1553
1554 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1555
1556 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1557
1558* Changes in completion.
1559
1560Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1561to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1562users expect at the shell prompt.
1563
1564Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1565`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1566program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1567files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1568be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1569considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1570name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1571
1572`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1573
1574* New platform-independent commands:
1575
1576It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1577hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1578documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1579
1580* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1581
d7275149
MK
1582Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1583revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1584many threads as your system allows you to have.
1585
e23194cb
EZ
1586Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1587
d7275149
MK
1588Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1589multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1590
1591* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1592
1593Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1594
e23194cb
EZ
1595GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1596debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1597supported.)
1598
1599* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1600
1601Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1602breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1603implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1604put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1605and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1606registers.
1607
1608The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1609debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1610watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1611
1612* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1613
1614New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1615the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1616
1617New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1618display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1619IDT.
1620
1621New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1622from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1623New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1624a given linear address.
1625
1626GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1627program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1628which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1629
1630DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1631
6c56c069
EZ
1632It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1633
e23194cb
EZ
1634* Changes in documentation.
1635
1636All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1637Documentation License.
1638
1639Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1640manual.
1641
1642TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1643
1644Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1645manual.
1646
1647The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1648documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1649hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1650
5d6640b1
AC
1651* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1652
1653The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1654``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1655contents of this file.
1656
1a1d8446
AC
1657* gdba.el deleted
1658
1659GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1660
9debab2f 1661*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1662
c63ce875
EZ
1663* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1664
1665Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1666programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1667displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1668greater level of detail.
1669
1670* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1671
1672It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1673bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1674on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1675written.
1676
1677* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1678
1679The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1680necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1681machines ``out of the box''.
1682
1683The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1684possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1685signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1686would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1687interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1688
1689It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1690standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1691even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1692and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1693terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1694
1695The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1696enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1697also works.
1698
1699DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1700GDB.
1701
1702It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1703directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1704times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1705breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1706
ed9a39eb
JM
1707* New native configurations
1708
1709ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1710PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1711
7a292a7a
SS
1712* New targets
1713
96baa820 1714Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1715x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1716PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1717TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1718
085dd6e6
JM
1719* OBSOLETE configurations
1720
1721Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1722Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1723Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1724ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1725Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1726
9debab2f
AC
1727Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1728but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1729these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1730be permanently REMOVED.
1731
5330533d
SS
1732* Gould support removed
1733
1734Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1735
bc9e5bbf
AC
1736* New features for SVR4
1737
1738On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1739without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1740load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1741
1742* Many C++ enhancements
1743
1744C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1745in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1746
adf40b2e
JM
1747* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1748
1749A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1750sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1751with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1752``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1753
1754 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1755 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1756
43e526b9
JM
1757* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1758
1759A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1760expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1761instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1762
1763The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1764added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1765
96baa820
JM
1766* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1767
1768The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1769``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1770include ``set remote P-packet''.
1771
11cf8741
JM
1772* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1773
1774The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1775accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1776``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1777
7876dd43
DB
1778* ``apropos'' command added.
1779
1780The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1781documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1782try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1783
bc9e5bbf
AC
1784* New MI interface
1785
1786A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1787interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1788process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1789"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1790enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1791
1792 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1793
c906108c
SS
1794*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1795
1796* New native configurations
1797
1798HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1799HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1800M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1801
1802* New targets
1803
1804Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1805Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1806Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1807
1808* OBSOLETE configurations
1809
1810Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1811
1812Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1813but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1814these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1815be permanently REMOVED.
1816
1817* ANSI/ISO C
1818
1819As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1820buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1821containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1822use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1823available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1824configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1825information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1826already.
1827
1828* Readline 2.2
1829
1830GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1831
1832* set extension-language
1833
1834You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1835languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1836you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1837 set extension-language .c c++
1838The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1839and their associated languages.
1840
1841* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1842
1843When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1844you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1845PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1846
1847 set processor NAME
1848
1849sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1850following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1851
1852 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1853 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1854 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1855 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1856 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1857 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1858 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1859 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1860 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1861 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1862 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1863
1864At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1865special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1866registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1867only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1868
1869* HP-UX support
1870
1871Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1872more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1873library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1874support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1875for xdb and dbx commands.
1876
1877* Catchpoints
1878
1879HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1880generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1881to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1882
1883This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1884argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1885output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1886
1887* Debugging across forks
1888
1889On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1890in the inferior.
1891
1892* TUI
1893
1894HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1895it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1896configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1897
1898* GDB remote protocol additions
1899
1900A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1901Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1902fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1903allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1904
1905For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1906full 64-bit address. The command
1907
1908 set remoteaddresssize 32
1909
1910can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1911the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1912will be discarded.
1913
1914In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1915command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1916
1917 maint packet heythere
1918
1919sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1920disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1921time.
1922
1923The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1924target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1925downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1926
1927* Tracing can collect general expressions
1928
1929You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1930further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1931doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1932
1933* mask-address variable for Mips
1934
1935For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1936a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1937of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1938
1939* Higher serial baud rates
1940
1941GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1942230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1943to achieve all of these rates.)
1944
1945* i960 simulator
1946
1947The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1948builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1949
1950
1951*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1952
1953* New native configurations
1954
1955Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1956Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1957Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1958PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1959PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1960Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1961Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1962
1963* New targets
1964
1965Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1966Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1967Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1968Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1969MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1970MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1971MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1972Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1973Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1974Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1975NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1976
1977* New debugging protocols
1978
1979ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1980M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1981DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1982PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1983PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1984Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1985
1986* DWARF 2
1987
1988All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1989format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1990information.
1991
1992* Java frontend
1993
1994GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1995only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1996
1997* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1998
1999For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2000loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2001locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2002
2003* Live range splitting
2004
2005GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2006range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2007more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2008
2009* Hurd support
2010
2011GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2012updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2013
2014* ARM Thumb support
2015
2016GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2017instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2018instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2019accordingly.
2020
2021* MIPS16 support
2022
2023GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2024instruction set.
2025
2026* Overlay support
2027
2028GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2029linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2030will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2031control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2032additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2033in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2034
2035* info symbol
2036
2037The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2038the symbol at the specified address.
2039
2040* Trace support
2041
2042The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2043asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2044extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2045includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2046file tracepoint.c for more details.
2047
2048* MIPS simulator
2049
2050Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2051by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2052of most MIPS variants.
2053
2054* Sparc simulator
2055
2056Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2057by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2058Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2059
2060* set architecture
2061
2062For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2063basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2064architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2065the possible architectures.
2066
2067*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2068
2069* New native configurations
2070
2071Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2072M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2073PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2074PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2075PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2076RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2077
2078* New targets
2079
2080ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2081I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2082MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2083MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2084PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2085Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2086Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2087
2088* PowerPC simulator
2089
2090The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2091contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2092PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2093basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2094performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2095
2096* Solaris 2.5
2097
2098GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2099
2100* Windows 95/NT native
2101
2102GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2103To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2104which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2105Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2106ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2107
2108* dont-repeat command
2109
2110If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2111command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2112useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2113extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2114
2115* Send break instead of ^C
2116
2117The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2118rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2119GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2120
2121* Remote protocol timeout
2122
2123The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2124that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2125to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2126
2127* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2128
2129By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2130loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2131stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2132when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2133in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2134
2135Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2136/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2137automatically on hpux10.
2138
2139* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2140
2141Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2142
2143* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2144
2145When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2146may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2147the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2148every character. The default value is 1050.
2149
2150* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2151
2152If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2153a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2154replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2155details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2156remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2157to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2158
2159* Speedups for remote debugging
2160
2161GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2162the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2163and more efficient S-record downloading.
2164
2165* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2166
2167GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2168Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2169
2170*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2171
2172* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2173
2174The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2175can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2176
2177* Remote targets use caching
2178
2179Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2180remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2181it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2182debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2183off' turns the the data cache off.
2184
2185* Remote targets may have threads
2186
2187The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2188in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2189gdb/remote.c for details.
2190
2191* NetROM support
2192
2193If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2194support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2195acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2196write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2197support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2198another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2199sequence is something like
2200
2201 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2202 load <prog>
2203 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2204
2205* Macintosh host
2206
2207GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2208may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2209it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2210available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2211device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2212directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2213scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2214mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2215
2216* Autoconf
2217
2218GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2219but does simplify configuration and building.
2220
2221* hpux10
2222
2223GDB now supports hpux10.
2224
2225*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2226
2227* New native configurations
2228
2229x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2230x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2231NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2232Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2233
2234* New targets
2235
2236A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2237HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2238CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2239PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2240WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2241
2242* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2243
2244GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2245possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2246filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2247the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2248if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2249
2250* Arguments to user-defined commands
2251
2252User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2253Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2254trivial example:
2255define adder
2256 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2257
2258To execute the command use:
2259adder 1 2 3
2260
2261Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2262Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2263use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2264
2265* New `if' and `while' commands
2266
2267This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2268commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2269expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2270execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2271terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2272`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2273if the expression is zero.
2274
2275* Fortran source language mode
2276
2277GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2278Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2279variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2280with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2281Fortran compilers.
2282
2283* Better HPUX support
2284
2285Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2286running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2287processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2288for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2289that behavior do the following before running the program:
2290
2291 adb -w a.out
2292 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2293 control-d
2294
2295This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2296To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2297
2298 adb -w a.out
2299 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2300 control-d
2301
2302You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2303the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2304external linkage.
2305
2306GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2307HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2308
2309* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2310
2311You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2312commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2313current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2314"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2315associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2316configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2317
2318* New DOS host serial code
2319
2320This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2321no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2322a PC's serial port.
2323
2324*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2325
2326* New "complete" command
2327
2328This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2329were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2330
2331* Trailing space optional in prompt
2332
2333"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2334allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2335
2336* Breakpoint hit counts
2337
2338"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2339has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2340can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2341to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2342less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2343that breakpoint.
2344
2345* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2346
2347"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2348an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2349arrays actually contain only short strings.
2350
2351* Shared library breakpoints
2352
2353In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2354breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2355
2356* Hardware watchpoints
2357
2358There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2359targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2360
55241689 2361Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2362
2363* Annotations
2364
2365Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2366and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2367
2368* Improved Irix 5 support
2369
2370GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2371
2372* Improved HPPA support
2373
2374GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2375
2376* New native configurations
2377
2378Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2379HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2380Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2381RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2382
2383* New targets
2384
2385OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2386MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2387Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2388
2389* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2390
2391There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2392This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2393
2394* Fixes
2395
2396As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2397and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2398
2399*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2400
2401* Irix 5 is now supported
2402
2403* HPPA support
2404
2405GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2406to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2407GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2408of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2409can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2410
2411
2412*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2413
2414* User visible changes:
2415
2416* Remote Debugging
2417
2418The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2419target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2420debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2421integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2422debugging info for the mips target).
2423
2424* DEC Alpha native support
2425
2426GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2427debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2428work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2429Alpha-specific notes.
2430
2431* Preliminary thread implementation
2432
2433GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2434
2435* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2436
2437This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2438to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2439for details).
2440
2441* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2442
2443This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2444mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2445call methods, ...etc.
2446
2447*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2448
2449 * User visible changes:
2450
2451Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2452supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2453other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2454somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2455
2456Filename completion now works.
2457
2458When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2459arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2460addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2461
2462All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2463vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2464should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2465your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2466to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2467
2468 * DEC alpha support
2469
2470This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2471cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2472
2473
2474*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2475
2476 * Testsuite
2477
2478This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2479The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2480via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2481
2482 * C++ demangling
2483
2484'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2485emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2486Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2487disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2488use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2489
2490 * Simulators
2491
2492GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2493So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2494Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2495
2496 * New targets supported
2497
2498H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2499H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2500SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2501Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2502IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2503
2504Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2505version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2506GO32 memory extender.
2507
2508 * New remote protocols
2509
2510MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2511
2512 * New source languages supported
2513
2514This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2515used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2516into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2517
2518
2519*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2520
2521 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2522
2523GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2524version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2525University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2526compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2527format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2528(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2529
2530Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2531
2532 * Faster and better demangling
2533
2534We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2535demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2536character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2537only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2538This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2539increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2540symbol lookups.
2541
2542`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2543from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2544compiler does not actually implement.
2545
2546 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2547
2548In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2549inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2550recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2551very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2552The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2553circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2554fix.
2555
2556The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2557release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2558
2559 * Improved configure script
2560
2561The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2562you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2563host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2564done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2565
2566We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2567version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2568`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2569The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2570only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2571We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2572
2573 * Documentation improvements
2574
2575There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2576produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2577before submitting changes.
2578
2579The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2580M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2581`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2582you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2583a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2584
2585*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2586We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2587been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2588or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2589`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2590around this problem.
2591
2592 * New features
2593
2594GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2595the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2596`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2597the target program.
2598
2599The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2600how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2601
2602 * New native hosts supported
2603
2604HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2605386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2606
2607 * New targets supported
2608
2609AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2610
2611 * New file formats supported
2612
2613BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2614HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2615
2616 * Major bug fixes
2617
2618Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2619
2620We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2621printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2622
2623We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2624for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2625release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2626
2627You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2628will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2629
2630We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2631for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2632especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2633libraries.
2634
2635The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2636information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2637command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2638any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2639when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2640
2641 * Internal improvements
2642
2643GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2644debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2645
2646GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2647Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2648symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2649contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2650shared code that handles any of them.
2651
2652 * New command line options
2653
2654We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2655
2656 * Mmalloc licensing
2657
2658The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2659General Public License.
2660
2661*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2662
2663 * Host/native/target split
2664
2665GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2666hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2667target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2668local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2669ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2670
2671The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2672GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2673is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2674code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2675any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2676built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2677handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2678
2679GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2680It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2681plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2682
2683 * New hosts supported
2684
2685HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2686386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2687386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2688
2689 * New targets supported
2690
2691Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
269268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2693
2694 * New native hosts supported
2695
2696386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2697 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2698386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2699
2700 * New file formats supported
2701
2702BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2703supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2704format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2705
2706 * New commands
2707
2708`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2709`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2710These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2711
2712`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2713
2714You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2715scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2716prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2717executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2718
2719 * C++ improvements
2720
2721We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2722info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2723symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2724
2725Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2726
2727 * Major bug fixes
2728
2729The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2730fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2731by the compiler.
2732
2733We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2734support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2735
2736John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2737slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2738that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2739purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2740the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2741mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2742
2743Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2744about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2745completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2746we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2747
2748 * AMD 29k support
2749
2750A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2751specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2752calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2753usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2754in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2755
2756We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2757Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2758of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2759resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2760
2761 * Remote interfaces
2762
2763We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2764with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2765message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2766This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2767needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2768breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2769each instruction being stepped through.
2770
2771The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2772registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2773
2774There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2775find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2776Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2777processor with a serial port.
2778
2779 * Configuration
2780
2781Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2782`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2783supported, and what files each one uses.
2784
2785 * Library changes
2786
2787There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2788disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2789Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2790disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2791
2792The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2793Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2794can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2795grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2796
2797 * Documentation
2798
2799The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2800reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2801as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2802encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2803system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2804bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2805
2806And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2807
2808
2809*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2810
2811 * Better support for C++ function names
2812
2813GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2814names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2815(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2816single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2817Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2818
2819GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2820the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2821You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2822lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2823for the list of formats.
2824
2825 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2826
2827Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2828C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2829directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2830can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2831usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2832about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2833this problem.)
2834
2835 * New 'maintenance' command
2836
2837All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2838the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2839can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2840
2841 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2842 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2843 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2844 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2845 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2846 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2847
2848The following commands are new:
2849
2850 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2851 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2852 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2853
2854 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2855
2856We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2857(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2858be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2859read after argv processing.
2860
2861 * New hosts supported
2862
2863Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2864
55241689 2865GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2866
2867We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2868is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2869for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2870masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2871fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2872It costs extra.
2873
2874 * New targets supported
2875
2876Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2877
2878 * More smarts about finding #include files
2879
2880GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2881all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2882greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2883especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2884the one that contains your sources.
2885
2886We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2887breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2888try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2889
2890 * Interesting infernals change
2891
2892GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2893section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2894target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2895stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2896
2897 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2898
2899There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2900 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2901 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2902
2903See the ChangeLog for details.
2904
2905*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2906
2907 * New machines supported (host and target)
2908
2909IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2910
2911SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2912
2913 * New malloc package
2914
2915GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2916Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2917capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2918This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2919pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2920more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2921
2922 * info proc
2923
2924The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2925'help info proc' for details.
2926
2927 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2928
2929The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2930Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2931possible.
2932
2933 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2934
2935Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2936support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2937conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2938environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2939that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2940in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2941
2942 * Cross byte order fixes
2943
2944Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2945targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2946
2947 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2948
2949If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2950system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2951`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2952program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2953called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2954Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2955and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2956the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2957option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2958starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2959
2960You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2961the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2962information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2963slower, but makes future operations faster.
2964
2965The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2966build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2967A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2968use is:
2969
2970 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2971
2972The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2973It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2974shared across multiple host platforms.
2975
2976 * longjmp() handling
2977
2978GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2979siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2980all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2981platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2982
2983 * Solaris 2.0
2984
2985Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2986this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2987reading symbols.
2988
2989 * Bug fixes
2990
2991As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2992People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2993crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2994
2995*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2996
2997 * New machines supported (host and target)
2998
2999SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3000 (except core files)
3001BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3002Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3003
3004 * New machines supported (target)
3005
3006AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3007
3008 * C++ support
3009
3010GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3011The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3012per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3013
3014GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3015`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3016extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3017good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3018will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3019released.
3020
3021 * New features for SVR4
3022
3023GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3024shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3025only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3026
3027The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3028on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3029it prints the address mappings of the process.
3030
3031If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3032bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3033
3034 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3035
3036Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3037now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3038skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3039make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3040same code linked statically.
3041
3042 * New Getopt
3043
3044GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3045version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3046continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3047Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3048added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3049future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3050
3051 * Bugs fixed
3052
3053The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3054Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3055See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3056
3057
3058*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3059
3060 * New machines supported (host and target)
3061
3062Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3063NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3064Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3065
3066 * Almost SCO Unix support
3067
3068We had hoped to support:
3069SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3070(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3071that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3072about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3073
3074 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3075
3076GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3077debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3078is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3079send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3080reqired (if any).
3081
3082 * New Readline
3083
3084GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3085is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3086required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3087
3088 * Bugs fixed
3089
3090The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3091Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3092See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3093
3094 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3095
3096GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3097supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3098symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3099
3100Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3101mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3102debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3103mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3104version 2.
3105
3106Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3107really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3108line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3109variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3110situation somewhat.
3111
3112When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3113However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3114methods.
3115
3116We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3117DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3118encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3119
3120
3121*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3122
3123 * Improved configuration
3124
3125Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3126Porting BFD is simpler.
3127
3128 * Stepping improved
3129
3130The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3131of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3132in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3133function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3134
3135 * Bug fixing
3136
3137Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3138
3139 * New host supported (not target)
3140
3141Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3142
3143
3144*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3145
3146 * Multiple source language support
3147
3148GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3149It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3150and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3151language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3152You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3153`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3154
3155 * GDB and Modula-2
3156
3157GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3158currently under development at the State University of New York at
3159Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3160continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3161
3162Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3163debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3164symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3165
3166There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3167in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3168
3169 * set write on/off
3170
3171GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3172a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3173the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3174by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3175effect immediately.
3176
3177 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3178
3179When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3180shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3181The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3182examining core files.
3183
3184 * set listsize
3185
3186You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3187The default is 10.
3188
3189 * New machines supported (host and target)
3190
3191SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3192Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3193Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3194
3195 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3196
3197IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3198
3199 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3200
3201AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3202AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3203Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3204
3205 * New remote interfaces
3206
3207AMD 29000 Adapt
3208AMD 29000 Minimon
3209
3210
3211*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3212
3213 * New Facilities
3214
3215Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3216
3217Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3218target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3219is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3220remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3221remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3222also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3223using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3224stub on the target system.
3225
3226New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3227
3228GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3229library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3230object file types such as a.out and coff.
3231
3232There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3233refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3234
3235
3236 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3237
3238All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3239by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3240
3241For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3242``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3243Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3244
3245What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3246print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3247will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3248all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3249
3250confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3251 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3252 it is already running. Default is ON.
3253
3254editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3255 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3256 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3257 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3258 Default is ON.
3259
3260history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3261 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3262 or the value of the environment variable
3263 GDBHISTFILE.
3264
3265history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3266 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3267 HISTSIZE.
3268
3269history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3270 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3271 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3272
3273history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3274 history expansion will be performed on
3275 command line input. The default is OFF.
3276
3277radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3278 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3279 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3280
3281height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3282 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3283 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3284 variable TERM.
3285
3286width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3287 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3288 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3289 variable TERM.
3290
3291Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3292``set width'' instead.
3293
3294print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3295 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3296 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3297 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3298
3299print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3300 is OFF.
3301
3302print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3303 "raw" form if off.
3304
3305print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3306 like instructions.
3307
3308print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3309
3310
3311 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3312
3313The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3314new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3315are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3316window.
3317
3318
3319 * Support for Shared Libraries
3320
3321GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3322Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3323before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3324happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3325At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3326from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3327shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3328It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3329
3330sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3331 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3332 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3333
3334info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3335
3336
3337 * Watchpoints
3338
3339A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3340expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3341tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3342quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3343problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3344more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3345
3346watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3347
3348info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3349
3350delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3351disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3352enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3353
3354
3355 * C++ multiple inheritance
3356
3357When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3358for C++ programs.
3359
3360 * C++ exception handling
3361
3362Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3363ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3364the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3365handler's context).
3366
3367catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3368 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3369 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3370
3371info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3372 current stack frame.
3373
3374
3375 * Minor command changes
3376
3377The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3378command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3379is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3380
3381The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3382at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3383frames without printing.
3384
3385 * New directory command
3386
3387'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3388The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3389about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3390with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3391find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3392
3393 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3394
3395For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3396for more details.
3397
3398GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3399two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3400Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3401where the program that you are debugging will run.