]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git/blame - gdb/NEWS
2011-08-17 Tristan Gingold <gingold@adacore.com>
[thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.3
5
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6* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
7 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
8 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
9 target hardware watchpoint.
10
11 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
12 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
13 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
14 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
15
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16* Python scripting
17
18 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
19 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
20 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
21 "off".
22
23 ** A prompt subsitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
24 Python API.
713389e0 25
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26 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
27 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
28 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
29 on GDB start-up.
30
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31 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
32
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33* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
34 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
35 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
36 lives.
37
38 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
39 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
40 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
41 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
42 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
43
44 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
45 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
46
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47* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
48 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
49 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
50 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
51 use this option to specify where to find it.
52
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53* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
54 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
55 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
56 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
57 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
58 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
59 section in the user manual for more details.
60
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61* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
62 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
63 become available after that.
64
edc84990 65* New commands "info macros", and "info definitions" have been added.
66
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67* Changed commands
68
69watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
70 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
71 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
72
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73info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
74 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
75 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
76
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77* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
78 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
79 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
80 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
81 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
82 is running.
83
84* New remote packets
85
86QTEnable
87
88 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
89
90QTDisable
91
92 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
93
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94* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
95 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
96
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97* New targets
98
99Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
100
d6e00af6 101*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 102
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103* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
104 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
105 matches the given regular expression.
106
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107* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
108
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109* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
110 dumping the instruction opcodes.
111
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112* New command line options
113
114-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
115 This is mostly for testing purposes.
116
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117* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
118 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
119
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120* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
121 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
122 source path list instead of augmenting it.
123
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124* GDB now understands thread names.
125
126 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
127 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
128
129 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
130 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
131
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132* OpenCL C
133 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
134 has been integrated into GDB.
135
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136* Python scripting
137
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138 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
139 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
140 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
141
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142 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
143 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
144 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
145 and allows for more dynamic content.
146
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147 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
148 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
149 have an is_valid method.
150
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151 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
152 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
153 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
154
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155 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
156
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157 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
158 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
159 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
160 that function like so:
161
162 result = some_value (10,20)
163
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164 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
165 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
166 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
167
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168 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
169 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
170 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
171 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
172 New function: register_pretty_printer.
173
174 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
175 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
176
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177 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
178
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179 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
180 selected thread.
181
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182 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
183 holds the thread's name.
184
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185 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
186 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 187 occurring in the process being debugged.
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188 The following events are currently supported:
189 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
190 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
191 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
192
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193* C++ Improvements:
194
195 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
196 instantiation. For example, if you have:
197
198 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
199
200 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
201 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
202 was added to GCC 4.5.
203
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204 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
205 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
206 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
207 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
208 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
209 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
210
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211* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
212 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
213 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
214 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
215 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
216
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217* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
218 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
219 execution to a label.
220
221* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
222 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
223 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
224 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
225
b56df873 226* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 227 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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228 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
229 of scope.
230
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231* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
232
233 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
234 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
235 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
236 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
237 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
238 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
239
240 (gdb) info threads
241 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
242
243 While now you see this:
244
245 (gdb) info threads
246 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
247
248 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
249 dumps.
250
251 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
252 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
253 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
254 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
255
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256* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
257 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
258 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
259 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
260 section in the user manual for more details.
261
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262* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
263
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264 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
265 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 266
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267 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
268
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269* New native configurations
270
271ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
272
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273* New targets:
274
275Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
276
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277* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
278 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
279 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
280 in the GDB user manual.
281
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282* Guile support was removed.
283
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284* New features in the GNU simulator
285
286 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
287
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288 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
289
76b8507d 290*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 291
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292* Shared library support for remote targets by default
293
294 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
295 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
296 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
297 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
298 was always disabled for such configurations.
299
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300* C++ Improvements:
301
302 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
303
304 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
305 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
306 For example:
307 namespace A
308 {
309 class B { };
310 void foo (B) { }
311 }
312 ...
313 A::B b
314 foo(b)
315 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
316 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
317 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
318
319 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
320
321 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
322 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
323 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
324 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
325 entry.
326 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
327 mentioned flavors of operators.
328
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329 ** static const class members
330
331 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
332 class definition has been fixed.
333
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334* Windows Thread Information Block access.
335
336 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
337 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
338 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
339 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
340 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
341 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
342
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343* Static tracepoints
344
345 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
346 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
347 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
348 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
349 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
350 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
351 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
352 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
353 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
354 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
355 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
356 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
357 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
358 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
359 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
360 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
361 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
362 the "New remote packets" section below.
363
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364* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
365
366 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
367 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
368 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
369 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
370
371* Observer mode
372
373 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
374 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
375 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
376 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
377 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
378 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
379 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
380
381* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
382 current thread.
383
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384* New remote packets
385
386qGetTIBAddr
387
388 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
389
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390qRelocInsn
391
392 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
393 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
394 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
395 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
396 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
397 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
398
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399qTfSTM, qTsSTM
400
401 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
402
403qTSTMat
404
405 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
406 program.
407
408qXfer:statictrace:read
409
410 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
411 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
412 to gdb's qSupported query.
413
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414QAllow
415
416 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
417
418QTDPsrc
419
420 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
421 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
422
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423* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
424 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
425 a directory.
426
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427* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
428
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429 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
430 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
431 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
432 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
433
434 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
435 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
436 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
437 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
438 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
439 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
440 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
441
442 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
443 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 444
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445 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
446
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447* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
448 it understands register description.
449
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450* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
451
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452* X86 general purpose registers
453
454 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
455 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
456 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
457 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
458 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
459
95a42b64 460* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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461 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
462 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
463 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
464 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
465 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 466
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467* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
468 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
469 in the specified file.
470
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471* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
472 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
473 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
474 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
475 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
476 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
477 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
478 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
479 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
480 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
481
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482* New commands
483
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484eval template, expressions...
485 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
486 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
487
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488set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
489show target-file-system-kind
490 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
491 names.
492
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493save breakpoints <filename>
494 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
495 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
496 definitions, use the `source' command.
497
498`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
499is now deprecated.
500
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501info static-tracepoint-markers
502 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
503
504strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
505 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
506 function, line, address, or marker ID.
507
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508set observer on|off
509show observer
510 Enable and disable observer mode.
511
512set may-write-registers on|off
513set may-write-memory on|off
514set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
515set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
516set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
517set may-interrupt on|off
518 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
519 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
520 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
521 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
522 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
523 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
524 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
525
526set record memory-query on|off
527show record memory-query
528 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
529 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
530
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531* Changed commands
532
533disassemble
534 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
535
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536* Python scripting
537
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538** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
539 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
540 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
541 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
542 GDB using Python' in the manual.
543
adc36818 544** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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545 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
546 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
547 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 548
fa33c3cd 549** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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550 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
551
552** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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553
554** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 555
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556** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
557
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558** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
559 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
560 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
561
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562* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
563there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
564tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
565regular breakpoints.
566
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567* New targets
568
569ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
570
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571* D language support.
572 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
573 language.
574
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575* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
576 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
577 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
578 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
579 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
580
581* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
582 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
583 conditions of the form:
584
585 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
586
587 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
588 interface mentioned above.
589
bfbf3774 590*** Changes in GDB 7.1
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592* C++ Improvements
593
594 ** Namespace Support
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595
596 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
597 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
598 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
599 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
600 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
601
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602 ** Bug Fixes
603
604 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
605 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
606 qualified name.
607
608 ** Cast Operators
609
610 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
611 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
612
2d1c1221
ME
613* New targets
614
615Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 616Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
617
618* New Simulators
619
620Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 621Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 622
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PA
623* Multi-program debugging.
624
625 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
626 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
627 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
628 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
629 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
630 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
631 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
632 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
633
d5551862
SS
634* New tracing features
635
636 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
637
638 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
639
640 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
641 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
642 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
643 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
644 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
645 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
646 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
647 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
648 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
649 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 650
d5551862 651 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
652
653 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
654 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
655 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
656 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
657 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
658 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
659 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
660 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
661 the regular trace command.
662
d5551862
SS
663 ** Disconnected tracing
664
665 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
666 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
667 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
668 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
669 connection is lost unexpectedly.
670
00bf0b85
SS
671 ** Trace files
672
673 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
674 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
675 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
676 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
677 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
678 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
679 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
680
681 ** Circular trace buffer
682
683 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
684 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
685 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
686 not be available for all target agents.
687
21a0512e
PP
688* Changed commands
689
690disassemble
691 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
692 the arguments to be comma-separated.
693
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DJ
694info variables
695 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
696 which only declare a variable are not shown.
697
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JB
698source
699 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
700 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
701 support.
702
703 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
704 "set script-extension" (see below).
705
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PA
706* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
707
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MS
708record save [<FILENAME>]
709 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
710 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
711
712record restore <FILENAME>
713 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
714 earlier time, for replay debugging.
715
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PA
716add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
717 Add a new inferior.
718
719clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
720 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
721 inferior has loaded.
722
723remove-inferior ID
724 Remove an inferior.
725
726maint info program-spaces
727 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
728
9a7071a8
JB
729set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
730show remote interrupt-sequence
731 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
732 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
733 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
734 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
735 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
736
737set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
738show remote interrupt-on-connect
739 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
740 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
741 Linux kernel.
742
743set remotebreak [on | off]
744show remotebreak
745Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
746
f61e138d
SS
747tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
748 Create or modify a trace state variable.
749
750info tvariables
751 List trace state variables and their values.
752
753delete tvariable $NAME ...
754 Delete one or more trace state variables.
755
6da95a67
SS
756teval EXPR, ...
757 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
758 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
759
7a697b8d
SS
760ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
761 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
762
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JK
763* New expression syntax
764
765 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
766 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
767
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PA
768* New options
769
770set follow-exec-mode new|same
771show follow-exec-mode
772 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
773 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
774 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
775
236f1d4d
SS
776set default-collect EXPR, ...
777show default-collect
778 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
779 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
780 such as registers or a critical global variable.
781
d5551862
SS
782set disconnected-tracing
783show disconnected-tracing
784 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
785 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
786 upon disconnection.
787
4daf5ac0
SS
788set circular-trace-buffer
789show circular-trace-buffer
790 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
791 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
792 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
793 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
794
fb2e7cb4
JB
795set script-extension off|soft|strict
796show script-extension
797 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
798 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
799 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
800 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
801 evaluation failed.
802 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
803
2b71fc8e
JB
804set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
805show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
806 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
807 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
808 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
809 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
810 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
811 is on.
812
de2e5182
TT
813* Python API Improvements
814
815 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
816 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
817 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
818
819 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
820 `is_base_class' attribute.
821
822 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
823
824 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
825 evaluate an expression.
826
f61e138d
SS
827* New remote packets
828
829QTDV
830 Define a trace state variable.
831
832qTV
833 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
834
d5551862
SS
835QTDisconnected
836 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
837
4daf5ac0
SS
838QTBuffer:circular
839 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
840
d5551862
SS
841qTfP, qTsP
842 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
843
2d483d34
MS
844* Bug fixes
845
846Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
847
6e0e5977
JB
848Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
849much more reliable. In particular:
850 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
851 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
852 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
853 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
854 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
855 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
856 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
857 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
858 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
859 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
860 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
861 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
862 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
863 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
864 non-threaded programs.
865
93c26624
JK
866PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
867This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
868libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
869executable program.
870
abc7453d 871*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 872
4efc6507
DE
873* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
874dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
875them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
876for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
877"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
878
782b2b07
SS
879* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
880breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
881or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
882the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
883for tracepoint actions.
884
53a71c06
CR
885* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
886raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
887modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 888
e7a8dbfb
HZ
889* Process record and replay
890
891 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
892 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
893 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
894 execute commands.
895
64644d9b
MS
896* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
897step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
898set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
899reverse execution.
900
b9412953
DD
901* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
902feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
9032.6.28 or later.
904
6c7a06a3
TT
905* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
906target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
907char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
908literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
909U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
910`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
911system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
912the installation instructions for more information.
913
f1838a98
UW
914* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
915remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
916with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
917the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
918
55333a84
DE
919* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
920and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
921
7f6a6314
PM
922* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
923now complete on file names.
924
65d12d83
TT
925* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
926completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
927For instance, consider:
928
929 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
930 # struct example variable;
931 (gdb) p variable.
932
933If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
934completions will be "f1" and "f2".
935
edb3359d
DJ
936* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
937the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
938
2fae03e8
TT
939* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
940operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
941macros.
942
47a3467a 943* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
944the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
945implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
946
947* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
948registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
949can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
950and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 951
08388c79
DE
952* New remote packets
953
954qSearch:memory:
955 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
956
a6f3e723
SL
957QStartNoAckMode
958 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
959 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
960 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
961
d7713ae0
EZ
962vKill
963 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
964 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
965
07e059b5
VP
966qXfer:osdata:read
967 Obtains additional operating system information
968
47a3467a
PA
969qXfer:siginfo:read
970qXfer:siginfo:write
971 Read or write additional signal information.
972
060871df
PA
973* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
974
975 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
976 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
977 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
978
c055b101 979* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 980DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
981
982* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
983and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
984`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 985
31fffb02
CS
986* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
987with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
988
88d8a8e0
JB
989* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
990
7f99b190
JB
991* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
992
ccd213ac
DJ
993* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
994which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
995
1fddbabb 996* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 997list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 998
a0ef4274
DJ
999* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1000conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1001have also been fixed.
1002
bfb8797a 1003* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1004From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1005are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1006
71c25dea
TT
1007* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1008example, given:
1009
1010 template<typename T> class C { };
1011 C<char const *> c;
1012
1013GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1014
1015 ptype C<char const *>
1016 ptype C<char const*>
1017 ptype C<const char *>
1018 ptype C<const char*>
1019
ccd213ac
DJ
1020* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1021
1022 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1023 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1024
7ae0e2a2
UW
1025 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1026 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1027 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1028
a6f3e723
SL
1029 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1030 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1031
da8bd9a3
DJ
1032 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1033 gdbserver.
1034
d70e31dd
DE
1035 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1036 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1037
1038 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1039 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1040 as appropriate.
1041
d57a3c85
TJB
1042* Python scripting
1043
1044 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1045 available is determined at configure time.
1046
d8906c6f
TJB
1047 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1048
aadc346a
JB
1049* Ada tasking support
1050
1051 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1052 been introduced:
1053
1054 info tasks
1055 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1056 info task N
1057 Print detailed information about task number N.
1058 task
1059 Print the task number of the current task.
1060 task N
1061 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1062
adb483fe
DJ
1063* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1064add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1065
2277426b
PA
1066* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1067
1068 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1069 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1070 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1071 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1072 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1073 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1074 below.
1075
08d16641
PA
1076* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1077"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1078information.
1079
e35359c5
UW
1080* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1081to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1082architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1083See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1084more information.
1085
85e747d2
UW
1086* Multi-architecture debugging.
1087
1088 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1089 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1090 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1091 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1092 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1093
1094* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1095use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1096Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1097powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1098--enable-targets configure option.
1099
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PA
1100* Non-stop mode debugging.
1101
1102 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1103 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1104 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1105 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1106 section in the user manual for more information.
1107
1108 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1109 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1110 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1111 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1112 extensions on linux targets.
1113
d7713ae0 1114* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1115
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1116catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1117 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1118 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1119 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1120 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1121 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1122 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1123 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1124 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1125
08388c79
DE
1126find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1127 val1 [, val2, ...]
1128 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1129
d57a3c85
TJB
1130maint set python print-stack
1131maint show python print-stack
1132 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1133
1134python [CODE]
1135 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1136
d7713ae0
EZ
1137macro define
1138macro list
1139macro undef
1140 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1141 interactively.
1142
1143info os processes
1144 Show operating system information about processes.
1145
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PA
1146info inferiors
1147 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1148
1149inferior NUM
1150 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1151
1152detach inferior NUM
1153 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1154
1155kill inferior NUM
1156 Kill inferior number NUM.
1157
d7713ae0
EZ
1158* New options
1159
3285f3fe
UW
1160set spu stop-on-load
1161show spu stop-on-load
1162 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1163
ff1a52c6
UW
1164set spu auto-flush-cache
1165show spu auto-flush-cache
1166 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1167 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1168
d7713ae0
EZ
1169set sh calling-convention
1170show sh calling-convention
1171 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1172
e0a3ce09 1173set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1174show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1175 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1176
1177set disassemble-next-line
1178show disassemble-next-line
1179 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1180 the debuggee stops.
1181
1182set remote noack-packet
1183show remote noack-packet
1184 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1185 under "New remote packets."
1186
1187set remote query-attached-packet
1188show remote query-attached-packet
1189 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1190
1191set remote read-siginfo-object
1192show remote read-siginfo-object
1193 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1194 packet.
1195
1196set remote write-siginfo-object
1197show remote write-siginfo-object
1198 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1199 packet.
1200
40ab02ce
MS
1201set remote reverse-continue
1202show remote reverse-continue
1203 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1204
1205set remote reverse-step
1206show remote reverse-step
1207 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1208
d7713ae0
EZ
1209set displaced-stepping
1210show displaced-stepping
1211 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1212 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1213 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1214
1215set debug displaced
1216show debug displaced
1217 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1218
1219maint set internal-error
1220maint show internal-error
1221 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1222
1223maint set internal-warning
1224maint show internal-warning
1225 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1226
ccd213ac
DJ
1227set exec-wrapper
1228show exec-wrapper
1229unset exec-wrapper
1230 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1231
aad4b048
JB
1232set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1233show multiple-symbols
1234 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1235 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1236 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1237
74960c60
VP
1238set breakpoint always-inserted
1239show breakpoint always-inserted
1240 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1241 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1242 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1243
0428b8f5
DJ
1244set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1245show arm fallback-mode
1246set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1247show arm force-mode
1248 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1249 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1250 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1251 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1252
10568435
JK
1253set disable-randomization
1254show disable-randomization
1255 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1256 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1257 multiple debugging sessions.
1258
d7713ae0
EZ
1259set non-stop
1260show non-stop
1261 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1262 a breakpoint.
1263
b3eb342c 1264set target-async
d7713ae0 1265show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1266 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1267 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1268 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1269 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1270
6c7a06a3
TT
1271set target-wide-charset
1272show target-wide-charset
1273 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1274 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1275
84603566
SL
1276set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1277show tcp auto-retry
1278set tcp connect-timeout
1279show tcp connect-timeout
1280 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1281 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1282 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1283
17a37d48
PP
1284set libthread-db-search-path
1285show libthread-db-search-path
1286 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1287 libthread_db.
1288
d4db2f36
PA
1289set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1290show schedule-multiple
1291 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1292 the current process.
1293
4e5d721f
DE
1294set stack-cache
1295show stack-cache
1296 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1297 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1298 affecting correctness.
1299
910c5da8
JB
1300set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1301show interactive-mode
1302 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1303 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1304 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1305 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1306 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1307
2277426b
PA
1308* Removed commands
1309
1310info forks
1311 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1312 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1313 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1314 command.
1315
1316fork NUM
1317 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1318 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1319 alias for the `fork' command.
1320
1321process PID
1322 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1323 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1324 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1325
1326delete fork NUM
1327 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1328 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1329 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1330 fork' command.
1331
1332detach fork NUM
1333 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1334 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1335 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1336 fork' command.
1337
a80b95ba
TG
1338* New native configurations
1339
1340x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1341
b8bfd3ed
JB
1342x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1343
75a2d5e7
TT
1344* New targets
1345
c28c63d8 1346Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1347x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1348x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1349S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1350
6de3146c
PA
1351* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1352 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1353
d5cbbe6e
JB
1354* Removed commands
1355
1356catch load
1357catch unload
1358 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1359
75feb17d 1360*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1361
af5ca30d
NH
1362* New native configurations
1363
1364NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1365Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1366
1367* New targets
1368
1369NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1370Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1371
7a404eba
PA
1372* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1373
1374 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1375 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1376 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1377 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1378
430ebac9
PA
1379* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1380(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1381
fe6fbf8b 1382* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1383is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1384
1385* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1386including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1387and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1388
10665d76
JB
1389* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1390accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1391more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1392
7cc46491
DJ
1393* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1394
d71340b8
DJ
1395* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1396registers on PowerPC targets.
1397
523c4513
DJ
1398* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1399targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1400
a6b151f1
DJ
1401* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1402commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1403
2d717e4f
DJ
1404* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1405extended-remote mode.
1406
24a836bd 1407* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1408The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1409error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1410The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1411
d0c678e6
UW
1412* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1413building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1414target architectures.
1415
d64a946d
TJB
1416* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1417Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1418now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1419stored in two consecutive float registers.
1420
ee163bf5
VP
1421* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1422breakpoints now.
1423
b93b6ca7 1424* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1425Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1426include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1427 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1428 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1429 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1430 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1431 of an assignment
1432 - Improved command completion in Ada
1433 - Several bug fixes
1434
d001be7a
DJ
1435* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1436process.
1437
a6b151f1
DJ
1438* New commands
1439
6d53d0af
JB
1440set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1441show print frame-arguments
1442 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1443 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1444
a6b151f1
DJ
1445remote put
1446remote get
1447remote delete
1448 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1449
1450* New MI commands
1451
1452-target-file-put
1453-target-file-get
1454-target-file-delete
1455 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1456
1457* New remote packets
1458
1459vFile:open:
1460vFile:close:
1461vFile:pread:
1462vFile:pwrite:
1463vFile:unlink:
1464 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1465
2d717e4f
DJ
1466vAttach
1467 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1468 mode.
1469
1470vRun
1471 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1472
8d5f9c6f 1473*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1474
19d378fc
MS
1475* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1476bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1477Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1478
3a40aaa0
UW
1479* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1480symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1481-Bsymbolic linker option.
1482
a6ec25f2
BW
1483* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1484recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1485is not supported.
1486
6dd09645
JB
1487* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1488frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1489
c9bb8148
DJ
1490* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
149132-bit or 64-bit register values.
1492
0d5de010
DJ
1493* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1494
23181151
DJ
1495* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1496target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1497a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1498
ea37ba09
DJ
1499* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1500automatically displayed as character or string data.
1501
1502* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1503arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1504as strings.
e1f48ead 1505
123dc839
DJ
1506* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1507for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1508only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1509
05a4558a
DJ
1510* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1511iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1512
7c963485
PA
1513* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1514ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1515has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1516
b18be20d
DJ
1517* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1518
0ca420ce
UW
1519* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1520
31d99776
DJ
1521* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1522layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1523segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1524
a4642986
MR
1525* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1526immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1527
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1528* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1529"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1530packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1531where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1532Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1533
1534* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1535(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1536
1537* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1538according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1539
c9bb8148
DJ
1540* New commands
1541
23776285
MR
1542set remoteflow
1543show remoteflow
1544 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1545 when debugging using remote targets.
1546
c9bb8148
DJ
1547set mem inaccessible-by-default
1548show mem inaccessible-by-default
1549 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1550 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1551 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1552 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1553 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1554
1555set breakpoint auto-hw
1556show breakpoint auto-hw
1557 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1558 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1559 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1560 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1561 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1562 including "next" and "finish".
1563
0e420bd8
JB
1564catch exception
1565catch exception unhandled
1566 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1567
1568catch assert
1569 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1570
f822c95b
DJ
1571set sysroot
1572show sysroot
1573 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1574 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1575 an alias to "set sysroot".
1576
83cc5c53
UW
1577info spu
1578 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1579 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1580 architecture.
1581
bd372731
MK
1582* New native configurations
1583
1584OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1585
23181151
DJ
1586set tdesc filename
1587unset tdesc filename
1588show tdesc filename
1589 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1590 not query the target for its built-in description.
1591
c9bb8148
DJ
1592* New targets
1593
54fe9172 1594OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1595MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1596Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1597
6dd09645
JB
1598* New remote packets
1599
1600QPassSignals:
1601 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1602 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1603
23181151
DJ
1604qXfer:features:read:
1605 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1606 features.
6dd09645 1607
83cc5c53
UW
1608qXfer:spu:read:
1609qXfer:spu:write:
1610 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1611 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1612
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1613qXfer:libraries:read:
1614 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1615 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1616 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1617 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1618
483367ee
DJ
1619* Removed targets
1620
1621Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1622
d08950c4
UW
1623alpha*-*-osf1*
1624alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1625d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1626hppa*-*-hiux*
1627i[34567]86-ncr-*
1628i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1629i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1630i[34567]86-*-netware*
1631i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1632i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1633i[34567]86-*-sco*
1634i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1635i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1636i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1637i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1638i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1639i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1640i[34567]86-*-isc*
1641m68*-cisco*-*
1642m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1643mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1644rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1645sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1646
7ce59000
DJ
1647* Other removed features
1648
1649target abug
1650target cpu32bug
1651target est
1652target rom68k
1653
1654 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1655
ea35711c
DJ
1656target hms
1657target e7000
1658target sh3
1659target sh3e
1660
1661 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1662 H8/300.
1663
1664target ocd
1665
1666 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1667 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1668 interfaces.
1669
7ce59000
DJ
1670DWARF 1 support
1671
1672 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1673 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1674
54d61198
DJ
1675Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1676
1677 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1678 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1679 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1680 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1681
ea35711c
DJ
1682MIPS ".pdr" sections
1683
1684 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1685 in debugging information.
1686
1687Scheme support
1688
1689 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1690 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1691
1a69e1e4
DJ
1692set mips stack-arg-size
1693set mips saved-gpreg-size
1694
1695 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1696
6dd09645 1697*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1698
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1699* New targets
1700
1701Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1702Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1703
6aec2e11
DJ
1704* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1705(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1706running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1707
1708* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1709Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1710supported.
1711
17218d91
DJ
1712* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1713broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1714
9ebce043
DJ
1715* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1716stub provides the required support.
1717
7d3d3ece
DJ
1718* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1719longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1720
4f8253f3
JB
1721* New commands
1722
1723set substitute-path
1724unset substitute-path
1725show substitute-path
1726 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1727 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1728 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1729 between compilation and debugging.
1730
9fa66fd7
AS
1731set trace-commands
1732show trace-commands
1733 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1734 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1735 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1736
1f5befc1
DJ
1737* REMOVED features
1738
1739The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1740
2ec3381a
DJ
1741Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1742an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1743
3d00d119
DJ
1744The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1745
be2a5f71
DJ
1746* New remote packets
1747
1748qSupported:
1749 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1750 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1751 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1752 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1753 target.
1754
0876f84a
DJ
1755qXfer:auxv:read:
1756 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1757 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1758
9ebce043
DJ
1759qXfer:memory-map:read:
1760 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1761 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1762
1763vFlashErase:
1764vFlashWrite:
1765vFlashDone:
1766 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1767
0876f84a
DJ
1768* Removed remote packets
1769
1770qPart:auxv:read:
1771 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1772 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1773
e374b601 1774*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1775
96309189
MS
1776* New targets
1777
1778Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1779
1780Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1781
53e5f3cf
AS
1782* New commands
1783
1784init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1785 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1786
ac264b3b
MS
1787The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1788
1789checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1790
1791restart <n> Return the program state to a
1792 previously saved state.
1793
1794info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1795
1796delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1797
1798set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1799 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1800
1801info forks List forks of the user program that
1802 are available to be debugged.
1803
1804fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1805 forks of the user program that are
1806 available to be debugged.
1807
1808delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1809 that are available to be debugged (and
1810 kill the forked process).
1811
1812detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1813 that are available to be debugged (and
1814 allow the process to continue).
1815
3950dc3f
NS
1816* New architecture
1817
1818Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1819
0ea3f30e
DJ
1820* Improved Windows host support
1821
1822GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1823native console support, and remote communications using either
1824network sockets or serial ports.
1825
f79daebb
GM
1826* Improved Modula-2 language support
1827
1828GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1829basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1830pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1831printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1832written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1833GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1834
acab6ab2
MM
1835* REMOVED features
1836
1837The ARM rdi-share module.
1838
f4267320
DJ
1839The Netware NLM debug server.
1840
53e5f3cf 1841*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1842
e0ecbda1
MK
1843* New native configurations
1844
02a677ac 1845OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1846OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1847
d64a6579
KB
1848* New targets
1849
1850Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1851
b33a6190
AS
1852* New command line options
1853
1854--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1855--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1856 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1857--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1858 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1859 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1860 with the --command (-x) option.
1861
11dced61
AC
1862* Deprecated commands removed
1863
1864The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1865removed:
1866
1867 Command Replacement
1868 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1869 othernames set arm disassembler
1870 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1871 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1872 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1873 regs info registers
1874
6fe85783
MK
1875* New BSD user-level threads support
1876
1877It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1878library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1879configurations are:
1880
1881FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1882FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1883OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1884
1885Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1886are not yet supported.
1887
5260ca71
MS
1888* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1889(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1890
e84ecc99
AC
1891* REMOVED configurations and files
1892
1893VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1894Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1895National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1896
31e35378
JB
1897* New "set print array-indexes" command
1898
1899After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1900when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1901behavior.
1902
e85e5c83
MK
1903* VAX floating point support
1904
1905GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1906
d91e9901
AS
1907* User-defined command support
1908
1909In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1910to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1911section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1912
f2cb65ca
MC
1913*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1914
f47b1503
AS
1915* New command line option
1916
1917GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1918debugging.
1919
f2cb65ca
MC
1920* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1921
1922GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1923information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1924by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1925proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1926to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1927
d08c0230
AC
1928* Internationalization
1929
1930When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1931internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1932continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1933
117ea3cf
PH
1934* Ada
1935
1936Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1937implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1938into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1939
d08c0230
AC
1940* New native configurations
1941
1942GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1943
1944* Remote 'p' packet
1945
1946GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1947packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1948
1949* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1950
1951GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1952The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1953features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1954i386 application).
1955
1956GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1957compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1958continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1959configurations:
1960
1961hppa-*-hpux
1962ia64-*-aix
1963mips-*-irix*
1964*-*-lynx
1965mips-*-linux-gnu
1966sds protocol
1967xdr protocol
1968powerpc bdm protocol
1969
1970Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1971made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1972
1973* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1974
1975Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1976been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1977configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1978permanently REMOVED.
1979
1980h8300-*-*
1981mcore-*-*
1982mn10300-*-*
1983ns32k-*-*
1984sh64-*-*
1985v850-*-*
1986
ebb7c577
AC
1987*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1988
1989* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1990
1991When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1992heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1993been fixed.
1994
1995* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1996
1997When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1998fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1999IRIX long double values).
2000
2001* VAX and "next"
2002
2003A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2004command. This problem has been fixed.
2005
860660cb 2006*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2007
0dea2468
AC
2008* Fix for ``many threads''
2009
2010On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2011rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2012error message:
2013
2014 ptrace: No such process.
2015 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2016
2017This problem has been fixed.
2018
2c07db7a
AC
2019* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2020
2021Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2022GDB to dump core).
2023
c23968a2
JB
2024* New ``start'' command.
2025
2026This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2027
71009278
MK
2028* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2029
2030Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2031live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2032platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2033
2034FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2035FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2036NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2037NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2038NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2039OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2040OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2041OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2042OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2043
3c0b7db2
AC
2044* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2045
2046Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2047These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2048of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2049call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2050signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2051
73cc75f3
AC
2052Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2053features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2054include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2055
7243600a
BF
2056* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2057
6f606e1c
MK
2058* New native configurations
2059
97dc871c 2060GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2061OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2062OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2063OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2064OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2065NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2066OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2067
a1b461bf
AC
2068* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2069
2070GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2071The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2072including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2073migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2074compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2075work, was also included.
2076
2077GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2078module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2079
2080h8300-*-*
2081mcore-*-*
2082mn10300-*-*
2083ns32k-*-*
2084sh64-*-*
2085v850-*-*
2086xstormy16-*-*
2087
2088Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2089made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2090
3c7012f5
AC
2091* REMOVED configurations and files
2092
2093Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2094Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2095Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2096Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2097Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2098AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2099Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2100decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2101riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2102sonymips mips-sony-*
2103sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2104
e5fe55f7
AC
2105*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2106
2107* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2108
2109The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2110GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2111command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2112program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2113with GDB".
2114
2115* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2116
2117Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2118libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2119cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2120GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2121shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2122the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2123are created.
2124
2125Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2126
2127* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2128
2129The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2130non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2131compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2132
2133* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2134
2135Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2136wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2137
2138* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2139
2140The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2141permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2142systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2143
2144* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2145
2146Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2147has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2148
2149* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2150
2151GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2152its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2153panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2154
2155* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2156
2157When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2158by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2159not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2160
faae5abe 2161*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2162
9175c9a3
MC
2163* Removed --with-mmalloc
2164
2165Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2166conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2167
3cc87ec0
MK
2168* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2169
2170The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2171the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2172and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2173you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2174
f0424ef6
MK
2175* Revised SPARC target
2176
2177The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2178FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2179support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2180from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2181(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2182
59659be2
ILT
2183* New C++ demangler
2184
2185GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2186names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2187with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2188programs.
2189
9e08b29b
DJ
2190* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2191
2192GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2193arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2194encountered these.
2195
8dfe8985
DC
2196* C++ nested types and namespaces
2197
2198GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2199improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2200is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2201Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2202namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2203"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2204frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2205if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2206GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2207
cced5e27
MK
2208* New native configurations
2209
2210NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2211OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2212OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2213OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2214OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2215
b4b4b794
KI
2216* New debugging protocols
2217
2218M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2219
7989c619
AC
2220* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2221
2222The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2223and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2224tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2225
5994185b
AC
2226* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2227
2228Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2229been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2230configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2231permanently REMOVED.
2232
2233Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2234Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2235Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2236Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2237Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2238AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2239Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2240decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2241riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2242sonymips mips-sony-*
2243sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2244
0ddabb4c
AC
2245* REMOVED configurations and files
2246
2247SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2248SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2249Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2250Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2251H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2252HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2253HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2254HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2255PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2256386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2257Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2258 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2259 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2260SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2261SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2262Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2263Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2264
c7f1390e
DJ
2265*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2266
1fe43d45
AC
2267* Objective-C
2268
2269Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2270integrated into GDB.
2271
e6beb428
AC
2272* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2273
2274DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2275information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2276By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2277backtraces.
2278
2279The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2280have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2281DWARF 2 CFI support.
2282
2283* Hosted file I/O.
2284
2285GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2286file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2287remote protocol documentation for details.
2288
2289* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2290
2291All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2292architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2293to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2294ppc32 on ppc64).
2295
2296* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2297
2298GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2299per-thread variables.
2300
2301* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2302
2303GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2304GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2305
2306* Separate debug info.
2307
2308GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2309automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2310of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2311system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2312and optional debug files.
2313
2314* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2315
2316DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2317describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2318debugger.
2319
2320GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2321for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2322
2323* Java
2324
2325A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2326Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2327considered "useable".
2328
85f8f974
DJ
2329* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2330
2331The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2332commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2333kernel.
2334
0fac0b41
DJ
2335* GDB supports logging output to a file
2336
2337There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2338used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2339
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2340* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2341
2342The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2343disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2344command.
2345
e286caf2 2346* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2347
2348The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2349registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2350
d28f9cdf
DJ
2351* Profiling support
2352
2353A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2354be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2355session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2356"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2357data, for more informative profiling results.
2358
da0f9dcd
AC
2359* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2360
2361The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2362option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2363"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2364
2365Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2366removed.
2367
fb9b6b35
JJ
2368Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2369Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2370Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2371 in a subsequent -var-update.
2372
954a4db8
MK
2373* New native configurations.
2374
2375FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2376
6760f9e6
JB
2377* Multi-arched targets.
2378
b4263afa 2379HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2380Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2381
1b831c93
AC
2382* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2383
2384Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2385been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2386configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2387permanently REMOVED.
2388
8b0e5691 2389Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2390Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2391H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2392HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2393HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2394HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2395PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2396Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2397 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2398 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2399Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2400Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2401
5835abe7
NC
2402* REMOVED configurations and files
2403
2404V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2405Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2406IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2407i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2408i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2409i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2410HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2411 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2412 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2413Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2414Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2415Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2416OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2417I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2418
a094c6fb
AC
2419* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2420
2421The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2422the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2423context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2424address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2425The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2426
299ffc64 2427*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2428
46248966
AC
2429* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2430
2431When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2432`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2433in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2434library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2435shared libs like mad''.
2436
b9d14705 2437* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2438
b9d14705
DJ
2439Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2440the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2441arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2442powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2443
e0e9281e
JB
2444* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2445
2446GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2447and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2448they expand.
2449
dd73b9bb
AC
2450The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2451invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2452
2453The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2454macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2455
e0e9281e
JB
2456Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2457information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2458your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2459information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2460
2250ee0c
CV
2461* Multi-arched targets.
2462
6e3ba3b8
JT
2463DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2464DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2465NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2466National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2467Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2468Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2469
cd9bfe15 2470* New targets.
e33ce519 2471
456f8b9d
DB
2472Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2473
e33ce519 2474
da8ca43d
JT
2475* New native configurations
2476
2477Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2478SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2479MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2480UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2481
cd9bfe15
AC
2482* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2483
2484Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2485been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2486configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2487permanently REMOVED.
2488
92eb23c5 2489Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2490OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2491IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2492Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2493Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2494Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2495i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2496i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2497i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2498HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2499 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2500 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2501I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2502
db034ac5
AC
2503* OBSOLETE languages
2504
2505CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2506
cd9bfe15
AC
2507* REMOVED configurations and files
2508
2509AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2510A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2511AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2512AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2513AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2514
2515testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2516
20f01a46
DH
2517* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2518
2519This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2520commands. The default is 1024.
2521
a5941fbf
MK
2522* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2523
2524Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2525
89743e04
MS
2526* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2527
2528These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2529to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2530from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2531
9fb14e79
JB
2532* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2533
2534The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2535including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2536of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2537
2037aebb
AC
2538*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2539
2540* New targets.
2541
2542Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2543
2544* Bug fixes
2545
2546gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2547mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2548Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2549
2550gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2551dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2552Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2553
2554Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2555Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2556By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2557
2558i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2559avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2560By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2561
37057839 2562*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2563
1a703748
MS
2564* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2565
2566This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2567really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2568In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2569target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2570This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2571(notably embedded) targets.
2572
cefd4ef5
MS
2573* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2574
55241689
AC
2575This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2576process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2577GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2578hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2579
352ed7b4
MS
2580* New command line option
2581
2582GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2583
2584* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2585
2586There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2587command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2588a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2589be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2590open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2591issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2592a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2593it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2594GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2595is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2596
fe419ffc
RE
2597* Changes in ARM configurations.
2598
2599Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2600configuration is fully multi-arch.
2601
eb7cedd9
MK
2602* New native configurations
2603
fe419ffc 2604ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2605x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2606AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2607Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2608
c9f63e6b
CV
2609* New targets
2610
2611Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2612
9b4ff276
AC
2613* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2614
2615Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2616been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2617configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2618permanently REMOVED.
2619
2620AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2621A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2622AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2623AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2624AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2625
b4ceaee6 2626testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2627
e2caac18
AC
2628* REMOVED configurations and files
2629
2630TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2631WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2632PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2633PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2634PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2635Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2636Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2637 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2638SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2639Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2640Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2641ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2642Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2643
c2a727fa
TT
2644* Changes to command line processing
2645
2646The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2647for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2648
467d8519
TT
2649* Changes to key bindings
2650
2651There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2652
7072a954
AC
2653*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2654
2655Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2656
2657Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2658corrupted.
2659
2660Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2661
2662Numerous documentation fixes.
2663
2664Numerous testsuite fixes.
2665
34f47bc4 2666*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2667
2668* New native configurations
2669
2670Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2671x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2672MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2673MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2674ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2675s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2676
bf64bfd6
AC
2677* New targets
2678
def90278 2679Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2680CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2681UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2682
17e78a56 2683* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2684
2685x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2686Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2687Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2688 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2689TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2690WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2691Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2692PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2693PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2694PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2695SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2696Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2697ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2698Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2699
17e78a56
AC
2700stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2701kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2702
7fcca85b
AC
2703Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2704been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2705configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2706permanently REMOVED.
2707
a196c81c 2708* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2709
2710Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2711Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2712Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2713ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2714Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2715ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2716
6d6b80e5 2717* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2718
6d6b80e5 2719GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2720sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2721present.
2722
bf64bfd6
AC
2723* Other news:
2724
e23194cb
EZ
2725* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2726
2727* The MI enabled by default.
2728
2729The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2730revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2731engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2732using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2733which is now deprecated.
2734
2735* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2736
2737GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2738main features are supported:
2739
2740 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2741
2742 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2743 extension;
2744
2745 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2746
2747 - a Pascal expression parser.
2748
2749However, some important features are not yet supported.
2750
2751 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2752
2753 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2754
2755 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2756 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2757
2758 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2759
2760 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2761
2762* Changes in completion.
2763
2764Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2765to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2766users expect at the shell prompt.
2767
2768Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2769`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2770program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2771files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2772be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2773considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2774name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2775
2776`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2777
2778* New platform-independent commands:
2779
2780It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2781hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2782documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2783
2784* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2785
d7275149
MK
2786Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2787revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2788many threads as your system allows you to have.
2789
e23194cb
EZ
2790Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2791
d7275149
MK
2792Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2793multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2794
2795* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2796
2797Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2798
e23194cb
EZ
2799GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2800debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2801supported.)
2802
2803* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2804
2805Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2806breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2807implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2808put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2809and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2810registers.
2811
2812The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2813debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2814watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2815
2816* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2817
2818New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2819the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2820
2821New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2822display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2823IDT.
2824
2825New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2826from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2827New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2828a given linear address.
2829
2830GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2831program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2832which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2833
2834DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2835
6c56c069
EZ
2836It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2837
e23194cb
EZ
2838* Changes in documentation.
2839
2840All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2841Documentation License.
2842
2843Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2844manual.
2845
2846TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2847
2848Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2849manual.
2850
2851The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2852documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2853hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2854
5d6640b1
AC
2855* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2856
2857The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2858``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2859contents of this file.
2860
1a1d8446
AC
2861* gdba.el deleted
2862
2863GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2864
9debab2f 2865*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2866
c63ce875
EZ
2867* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2868
2869Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2870programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2871displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2872greater level of detail.
2873
2874* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2875
2876It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2877bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2878on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2879written.
2880
2881* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2882
2883The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2884necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2885machines ``out of the box''.
2886
2887The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2888possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2889signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2890would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2891interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2892
2893It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2894standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2895even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2896and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2897terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2898
2899The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2900enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2901also works.
2902
2903DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2904GDB.
2905
2906It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2907directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2908times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2909breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2910
ed9a39eb
JM
2911* New native configurations
2912
2913ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2914PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2915
7a292a7a
SS
2916* New targets
2917
96baa820 2918Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2919x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2920PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2921TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2922
085dd6e6
JM
2923* OBSOLETE configurations
2924
2925Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2926Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2927Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2928ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2929Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2930
9debab2f
AC
2931Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2932but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2933these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2934be permanently REMOVED.
2935
5330533d
SS
2936* Gould support removed
2937
2938Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2939
bc9e5bbf
AC
2940* New features for SVR4
2941
2942On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2943without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2944load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2945
2946* Many C++ enhancements
2947
2948C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2949in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2950
adf40b2e
JM
2951* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2952
2953A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2954sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2955with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2956``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2957
2958 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2959 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2960
43e526b9
JM
2961* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2962
2963A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2964expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2965instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2966
2967The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2968added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2969
96baa820
JM
2970* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2971
2972The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2973``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2974include ``set remote P-packet''.
2975
11cf8741
JM
2976* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2977
2978The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2979accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2980``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2981
7876dd43
DB
2982* ``apropos'' command added.
2983
2984The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2985documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2986try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2987
bc9e5bbf
AC
2988* New MI interface
2989
2990A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2991interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2992process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2993"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2994enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2995
2996 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2997
c906108c
SS
2998*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2999
3000* New native configurations
3001
3002HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3003HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3004M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3005
3006* New targets
3007
3008Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3009Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3010Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3011
3012* OBSOLETE configurations
3013
3014Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3015
3016Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3017but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3018these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3019be permanently REMOVED.
3020
3021* ANSI/ISO C
3022
3023As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3024buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3025containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3026use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3027available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3028configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3029information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3030already.
3031
3032* Readline 2.2
3033
3034GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3035
3036* set extension-language
3037
3038You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3039languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3040you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3041 set extension-language .c c++
3042The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3043and their associated languages.
3044
3045* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3046
3047When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3048you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3049PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3050
3051 set processor NAME
3052
3053sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3054following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3055
3056 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3057 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3058 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3059 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3060 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3061 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3062 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3063 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3064 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3065 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3066 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3067
3068At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3069special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3070registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3071only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3072
3073* HP-UX support
3074
3075Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3076more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3077library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3078support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3079for xdb and dbx commands.
3080
3081* Catchpoints
3082
3083HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3084generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3085to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3086
3087This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3088argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3089output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3090
3091* Debugging across forks
3092
3093On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3094in the inferior.
3095
3096* TUI
3097
3098HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3099it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3100configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3101
3102* GDB remote protocol additions
3103
3104A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3105Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3106fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3107allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3108
3109For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3110full 64-bit address. The command
3111
3112 set remoteaddresssize 32
3113
3114can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3115the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3116will be discarded.
3117
3118In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3119command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3120
3121 maint packet heythere
3122
3123sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3124disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3125time.
3126
3127The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3128target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3129downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3130
3131* Tracing can collect general expressions
3132
3133You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3134further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3135doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3136
3137* mask-address variable for Mips
3138
3139For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3140a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3141of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3142
3143* Higher serial baud rates
3144
3145GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3146230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3147to achieve all of these rates.)
3148
3149* i960 simulator
3150
3151The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3152builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3153
3154
3155*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3156
3157* New native configurations
3158
3159Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3160Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3161Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3162PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3163PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3164Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3165Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3166
3167* New targets
3168
3169Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3170Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3171Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3172Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3173MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3174MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3175MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3176Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3177Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3178Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3179NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3180
3181* New debugging protocols
3182
3183ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3184M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3185DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3186PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3187PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3188Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3189
3190* DWARF 2
3191
3192All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3193format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3194information.
3195
3196* Java frontend
3197
3198GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3199only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3200
3201* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3202
3203For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3204loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3205locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3206
3207* Live range splitting
3208
3209GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3210range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3211more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3212
3213* Hurd support
3214
3215GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3216updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3217
3218* ARM Thumb support
3219
3220GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3221instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3222instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3223accordingly.
3224
3225* MIPS16 support
3226
3227GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3228instruction set.
3229
3230* Overlay support
3231
3232GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3233linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3234will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3235control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3236additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3237in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3238
3239* info symbol
3240
3241The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3242the symbol at the specified address.
3243
3244* Trace support
3245
3246The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3247asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3248extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3249includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3250file tracepoint.c for more details.
3251
3252* MIPS simulator
3253
3254Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3255by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3256of most MIPS variants.
3257
3258* Sparc simulator
3259
3260Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3261by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3262Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3263
3264* set architecture
3265
3266For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3267basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3268architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3269the possible architectures.
3270
3271*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3272
3273* New native configurations
3274
3275Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3276M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3277PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3278PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3279PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3280RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3281
3282* New targets
3283
3284ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3285I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3286MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3287MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3288PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3289Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3290Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3291
3292* PowerPC simulator
3293
3294The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3295contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3296PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3297basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3298performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3299
3300* Solaris 2.5
3301
3302GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3303
3304* Windows 95/NT native
3305
3306GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3307To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3308which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3309Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3310ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3311
3312* dont-repeat command
3313
3314If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3315command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3316useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3317extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3318
3319* Send break instead of ^C
3320
3321The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3322rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3323GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3324
3325* Remote protocol timeout
3326
3327The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3328that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3329to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3330
3331* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3332
3333By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3334loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3335stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3336when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3337in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3338
3339Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3340/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3341automatically on hpux10.
3342
3343* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3344
3345Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3346
3347* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3348
3349When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3350may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3351the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3352every character. The default value is 1050.
3353
3354* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3355
3356If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3357a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3358replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3359details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3360remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3361to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3362
3363* Speedups for remote debugging
3364
3365GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3366the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3367and more efficient S-record downloading.
3368
3369* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3370
3371GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3372Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3373
3374*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3375
3376* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3377
3378The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3379can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3380
3381* Remote targets use caching
3382
3383Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3384remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3385it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3386debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3387off' turns the the data cache off.
3388
3389* Remote targets may have threads
3390
3391The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3392in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3393gdb/remote.c for details.
3394
3395* NetROM support
3396
3397If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3398support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3399acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3400write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3401support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3402another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3403sequence is something like
3404
3405 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3406 load <prog>
3407 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3408
3409* Macintosh host
3410
3411GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3412may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3413it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3414available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3415device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3416directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3417scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3418mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3419
3420* Autoconf
3421
3422GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3423but does simplify configuration and building.
3424
3425* hpux10
3426
3427GDB now supports hpux10.
3428
3429*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3430
3431* New native configurations
3432
3433x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3434x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3435NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3436Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3437
3438* New targets
3439
3440A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3441HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3442CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3443PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3444WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3445
3446* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3447
3448GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3449possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3450filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3451the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3452if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3453
3454* Arguments to user-defined commands
3455
3456User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3457Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3458trivial example:
3459define adder
3460 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3461
3462To execute the command use:
3463adder 1 2 3
3464
3465Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3466Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3467use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3468
3469* New `if' and `while' commands
3470
3471This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3472commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3473expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3474execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3475terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3476`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3477if the expression is zero.
3478
3479* Fortran source language mode
3480
3481GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3482Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3483variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3484with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3485Fortran compilers.
3486
3487* Better HPUX support
3488
3489Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3490running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3491processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3492for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3493that behavior do the following before running the program:
3494
3495 adb -w a.out
3496 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3497 control-d
3498
3499This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3500To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3501
3502 adb -w a.out
3503 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3504 control-d
3505
3506You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3507the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3508external linkage.
3509
3510GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3511HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3512
3513* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3514
3515You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3516commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3517current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3518"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3519associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3520configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3521
3522* New DOS host serial code
3523
3524This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3525no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3526a PC's serial port.
3527
3528*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3529
3530* New "complete" command
3531
3532This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3533were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3534
3535* Trailing space optional in prompt
3536
3537"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3538allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3539
3540* Breakpoint hit counts
3541
3542"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3543has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3544can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3545to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3546less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3547that breakpoint.
3548
3549* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3550
3551"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3552an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3553arrays actually contain only short strings.
3554
3555* Shared library breakpoints
3556
3557In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3558breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3559
3560* Hardware watchpoints
3561
3562There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3563targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3564
55241689 3565Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3566
3567* Annotations
3568
3569Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3570and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3571
3572* Improved Irix 5 support
3573
3574GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3575
3576* Improved HPPA support
3577
3578GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3579
3580* New native configurations
3581
3582Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3583HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3584Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3585RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3586
3587* New targets
3588
3589OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3590MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3591Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3592
3593* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3594
3595There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3596This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3597
3598* Fixes
3599
3600As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3601and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3602
3603*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3604
3605* Irix 5 is now supported
3606
3607* HPPA support
3608
3609GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3610to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3611GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3612of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3613can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3614
3615
3616*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3617
3618* User visible changes:
3619
3620* Remote Debugging
3621
3622The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3623target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3624debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3625integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3626debugging info for the mips target).
3627
3628* DEC Alpha native support
3629
3630GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3631debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3632work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3633Alpha-specific notes.
3634
3635* Preliminary thread implementation
3636
3637GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3638
3639* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3640
3641This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3642to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3643for details).
3644
3645* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3646
3647This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3648mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3649call methods, ...etc.
3650
3651*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3652
3653 * User visible changes:
3654
3655Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3656supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3657other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3658somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3659
3660Filename completion now works.
3661
3662When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3663arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3664addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3665
3666All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3667vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3668should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3669your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3670to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3671
3672 * DEC alpha support
3673
3674This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3675cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3676
3677
3678*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3679
3680 * Testsuite
3681
3682This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3683The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3684via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3685
3686 * C++ demangling
3687
3688'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3689emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3690Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3691disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3692use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3693
3694 * Simulators
3695
3696GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3697So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3698Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3699
3700 * New targets supported
3701
3702H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3703H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3704SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3705Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3706IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3707
3708Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3709version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3710GO32 memory extender.
3711
3712 * New remote protocols
3713
3714MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3715
3716 * New source languages supported
3717
3718This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3719used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3720into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3721
3722
3723*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3724
3725 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3726
3727GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3728version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3729University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3730compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3731format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3732(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3733
3734Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3735
3736 * Faster and better demangling
3737
3738We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3739demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3740character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3741only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3742This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3743increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3744symbol lookups.
3745
3746`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3747from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3748compiler does not actually implement.
3749
3750 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3751
3752In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3753inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3754recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3755very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3756The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3757circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3758fix.
3759
3760The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3761release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3762
3763 * Improved configure script
3764
3765The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3766you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3767host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3768done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3769
3770We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3771version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3772`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3773The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3774only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3775We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3776
3777 * Documentation improvements
3778
3779There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3780produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3781before submitting changes.
3782
3783The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3784M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3785`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3786you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3787a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3788
3789*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3790We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3791been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3792or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3793`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3794around this problem.
3795
3796 * New features
3797
3798GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3799the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3800`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3801the target program.
3802
3803The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3804how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3805
3806 * New native hosts supported
3807
3808HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3809386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3810
3811 * New targets supported
3812
3813AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3814
3815 * New file formats supported
3816
3817BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3818HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3819
3820 * Major bug fixes
3821
3822Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3823
3824We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3825printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3826
3827We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3828for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3829release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3830
3831You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3832will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3833
3834We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3835for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3836especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3837libraries.
3838
3839The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3840information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3841command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3842any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3843when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3844
3845 * Internal improvements
3846
3847GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3848debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3849
3850GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3851Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3852symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3853contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3854shared code that handles any of them.
3855
3856 * New command line options
3857
3858We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3859
3860 * Mmalloc licensing
3861
3862The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3863General Public License.
3864
3865*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3866
3867 * Host/native/target split
3868
3869GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3870hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3871target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3872local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3873ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3874
3875The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3876GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3877is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3878code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3879any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3880built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3881handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3882
3883GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3884It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3885plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3886
3887 * New hosts supported
3888
3889HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3890386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3891386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3892
3893 * New targets supported
3894
3895Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
389668030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3897
3898 * New native hosts supported
3899
3900386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3901 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3902386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3903
3904 * New file formats supported
3905
3906BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3907supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3908format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3909
3910 * New commands
3911
3912`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3913`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3914These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3915
3916`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3917
3918You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3919scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3920prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3921executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3922
3923 * C++ improvements
3924
3925We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3926info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3927symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3928
3929Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3930
3931 * Major bug fixes
3932
3933The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3934fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3935by the compiler.
3936
3937We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3938support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3939
3940John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3941slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3942that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3943purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3944the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3945mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3946
3947Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3948about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3949completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3950we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3951
3952 * AMD 29k support
3953
3954A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3955specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3956calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3957usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3958in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3959
3960We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3961Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3962of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3963resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3964
3965 * Remote interfaces
3966
3967We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3968with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3969message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3970This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3971needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3972breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3973each instruction being stepped through.
3974
3975The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3976registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3977
3978There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3979find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3980Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3981processor with a serial port.
3982
3983 * Configuration
3984
3985Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3986`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3987supported, and what files each one uses.
3988
3989 * Library changes
3990
3991There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3992disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3993Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3994disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3995
3996The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3997Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3998can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3999grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4000
4001 * Documentation
4002
4003The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4004reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4005as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4006encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4007system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4008bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4009
4010And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4011
4012
4013*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4014
4015 * Better support for C++ function names
4016
4017GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4018names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4019(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4020single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4021Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4022
4023GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4024the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4025You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4026lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4027for the list of formats.
4028
4029 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4030
4031Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4032C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4033directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4034can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4035usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4036about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4037this problem.)
4038
4039 * New 'maintenance' command
4040
4041All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4042the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4043can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4044
4045 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4046 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4047 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4048 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4049 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4050 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4051
4052The following commands are new:
4053
4054 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4055 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4056 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4057
4058 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4059
4060We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4061(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4062be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4063read after argv processing.
4064
4065 * New hosts supported
4066
4067Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4068
55241689 4069GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4070
4071We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4072is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4073for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4074masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4075fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4076It costs extra.
4077
4078 * New targets supported
4079
4080Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4081
4082 * More smarts about finding #include files
4083
4084GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4085all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4086greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4087especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4088the one that contains your sources.
4089
4090We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4091breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4092try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4093
4094 * Interesting infernals change
4095
4096GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4097section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4098target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4099stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4100
4101 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4102
4103There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4104 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4105 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4106
4107See the ChangeLog for details.
4108
4109*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4110
4111 * New machines supported (host and target)
4112
4113IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4114
4115SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4116
4117 * New malloc package
4118
4119GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4120Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4121capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4122This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4123pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4124more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4125
4126 * info proc
4127
4128The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4129'help info proc' for details.
4130
4131 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4132
4133The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4134Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4135possible.
4136
4137 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4138
4139Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4140support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4141conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4142environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4143that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4144in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4145
4146 * Cross byte order fixes
4147
4148Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4149targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4150
4151 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4152
4153If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4154system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4155`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4156program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4157called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4158Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4159and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4160the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4161option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4162starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4163
4164You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4165the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4166information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4167slower, but makes future operations faster.
4168
4169The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4170build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4171A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4172use is:
4173
4174 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4175
4176The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4177It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4178shared across multiple host platforms.
4179
4180 * longjmp() handling
4181
4182GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4183siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4184all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4185platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4186
4187 * Solaris 2.0
4188
4189Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4190this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4191reading symbols.
4192
4193 * Bug fixes
4194
4195As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4196People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4197crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4198
4199*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4200
4201 * New machines supported (host and target)
4202
4203SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4204 (except core files)
4205BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4206Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4207
4208 * New machines supported (target)
4209
4210AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4211
4212 * C++ support
4213
4214GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4215The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4216per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4217
4218GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4219`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4220extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4221good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4222will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4223released.
4224
4225 * New features for SVR4
4226
4227GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4228shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4229only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4230
4231The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4232on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4233it prints the address mappings of the process.
4234
4235If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4236bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4237
4238 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4239
4240Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4241now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4242skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4243make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4244same code linked statically.
4245
4246 * New Getopt
4247
4248GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4249version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4250continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4251Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4252added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4253future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4254
4255 * Bugs fixed
4256
4257The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4258Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4259See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4260
4261
4262*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4263
4264 * New machines supported (host and target)
4265
4266Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4267NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4268Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4269
4270 * Almost SCO Unix support
4271
4272We had hoped to support:
4273SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4274(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4275that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4276about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4277
4278 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4279
4280GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4281debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4282is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4283send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4284reqired (if any).
4285
4286 * New Readline
4287
4288GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4289is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4290required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4291
4292 * Bugs fixed
4293
4294The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4295Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4296See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4297
4298 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4299
4300GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4301supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4302symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4303
4304Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4305mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4306debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4307mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4308version 2.
4309
4310Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4311really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4312line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4313variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4314situation somewhat.
4315
4316When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4317However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4318methods.
4319
4320We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4321DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4322encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4323
4324
4325*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4326
4327 * Improved configuration
4328
4329Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4330Porting BFD is simpler.
4331
4332 * Stepping improved
4333
4334The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4335of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4336in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4337function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4338
4339 * Bug fixing
4340
4341Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4342
4343 * New host supported (not target)
4344
4345Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4346
4347
4348*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4349
4350 * Multiple source language support
4351
4352GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4353It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4354and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4355language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4356You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4357`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4358
4359 * GDB and Modula-2
4360
4361GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4362currently under development at the State University of New York at
4363Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4364continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4365
4366Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4367debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4368symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4369
4370There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4371in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4372
4373 * set write on/off
4374
4375GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4376a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4377the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4378by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4379effect immediately.
4380
4381 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4382
4383When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4384shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4385The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4386examining core files.
4387
4388 * set listsize
4389
4390You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4391The default is 10.
4392
4393 * New machines supported (host and target)
4394
4395SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4396Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4397Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4398
4399 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4400
4401IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4402
4403 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4404
4405AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4406AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4407Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4408
4409 * New remote interfaces
4410
4411AMD 29000 Adapt
4412AMD 29000 Minimon
4413
4414
4415*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4416
4417 * New Facilities
4418
4419Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4420
4421Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4422target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4423is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4424remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4425remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4426also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4427using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4428stub on the target system.
4429
4430New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4431
4432GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4433library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4434object file types such as a.out and coff.
4435
4436There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4437refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4438
4439
4440 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4441
4442All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4443by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4444
4445For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4446``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4447Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4448
4449What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4450print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4451will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4452all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4453
4454confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4455 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4456 it is already running. Default is ON.
4457
4458editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4459 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4460 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4461 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4462 Default is ON.
4463
4464history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4465 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4466 or the value of the environment variable
4467 GDBHISTFILE.
4468
4469history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4470 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4471 HISTSIZE.
4472
4473history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4474 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4475 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4476
4477history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4478 history expansion will be performed on
4479 command line input. The default is OFF.
4480
4481radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4482 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4483 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4484
4485height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4486 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4487 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4488 variable TERM.
4489
4490width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4491 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4492 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4493 variable TERM.
4494
4495Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4496``set width'' instead.
4497
4498print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4499 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4500 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4501 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4502
4503print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4504 is OFF.
4505
4506print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4507 "raw" form if off.
4508
4509print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4510 like instructions.
4511
4512print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4513
4514
4515 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4516
4517The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4518new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4519are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4520window.
4521
4522
4523 * Support for Shared Libraries
4524
4525GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4526Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4527before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4528happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4529At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4530from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4531shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4532It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4533
4534sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4535 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4536 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4537
4538info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4539
4540
4541 * Watchpoints
4542
4543A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4544expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4545tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4546quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4547problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4548more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4549
4550watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4551
4552info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4553
4554delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4555disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4556enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4557
4558
4559 * C++ multiple inheritance
4560
4561When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4562for C++ programs.
4563
4564 * C++ exception handling
4565
4566Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4567ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4568the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4569handler's context).
4570
4571catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4572 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4573 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4574
4575info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4576 current stack frame.
4577
4578
4579 * Minor command changes
4580
4581The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4582command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4583is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4584
4585The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4586at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4587frames without printing.
4588
4589 * New directory command
4590
4591'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4592The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4593about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4594with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4595find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4596
4597 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4598
4599For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4600for more details.
4601
4602GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4603two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4604Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4605where the program that you are debugging will run.