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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
7a292a7a
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4*** Changes since GDB-4.18:
5
6* New targets
7
96baa820 8Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
9x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
10PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
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11TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
12
085dd6e6
JM
13* OBSOLETE configurations
14
15Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
16Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 17Pyramid pyramid-*-*
7a292a7a 18
adf40b2e
JM
19* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
20
21A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
22sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
23with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
24``|<program> <args>'' vis:
25
26 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
27 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
28
43e526b9
JM
29* MIPS 64 remote protocol
30
31A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
32expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
33instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
34
35The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
36added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
37
96baa820
JM
38* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
39
40The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
41``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
42include ``set remote P-packet''.
43
c906108c
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44*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
45
46* New native configurations
47
48HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
49HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
50M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
51
52* New targets
53
54Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
55Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
56Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
57
58* OBSOLETE configurations
59
60Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
61
62Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
63but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
64these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
65be permanently REMOVED.
66
67* ANSI/ISO C
68
69As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
70buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
71containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
72use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
73available. If this is not true, please report the affected
74configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
75information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
76already.
77
78* Readline 2.2
79
80GDB now uses readline 2.2.
81
82* set extension-language
83
84You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
85languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
86you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
87 set extension-language .c c++
88The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
89and their associated languages.
90
91* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
92
93When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
94you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
95PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
96
97 set processor NAME
98
99sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
100following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
101
102 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
103 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
104 403 IBM PowerPC 403
105 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
106 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
107 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
108 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
109 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
110 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
111 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
112 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
113
114At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
115special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
116registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
117only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
118
119* HP-UX support
120
121Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
122more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
123library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
124support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
125for xdb and dbx commands.
126
127* Catchpoints
128
129HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
130generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
131to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
132
133This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
134argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
135output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
136
137* Debugging across forks
138
139On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
140in the inferior.
141
142* TUI
143
144HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
145it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
146configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
147
148* GDB remote protocol additions
149
150A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
151Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
152fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
153allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
154
155For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
156full 64-bit address. The command
157
158 set remoteaddresssize 32
159
160can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
161the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
162will be discarded.
163
164In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
165command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
166
167 maint packet heythere
168
169sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
170disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
171time.
172
173The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
174target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
175downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
176
177* Tracing can collect general expressions
178
179You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
180further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
181doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
182
183* mask-address variable for Mips
184
185For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
186a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
187of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
188
189* Higher serial baud rates
190
191GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
192230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
193to achieve all of these rates.)
194
195* i960 simulator
196
197The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
198builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
199
200
201*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
202
203* New native configurations
204
205Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
206Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
207Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
208PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
209PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
210Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
211Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
212
213* New targets
214
215Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
216Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
217Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
218Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
219MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
220MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
221MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
222Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
223Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
224Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
225NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
226
227* New debugging protocols
228
229ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
230M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
231DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
232PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
233PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
234Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
235
236* DWARF 2
237
238All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
239format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
240information.
241
242* Java frontend
243
244GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
245only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
246
247* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
248
249For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
250loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
251locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
252
253* Live range splitting
254
255GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
256range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
257more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
258
259* Hurd support
260
261GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
262updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
263
264* ARM Thumb support
265
266GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
267instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
268instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
269accordingly.
270
271* MIPS16 support
272
273GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
274instruction set.
275
276* Overlay support
277
278GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
279linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
280will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
281control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
282additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
283in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
284
285* info symbol
286
287The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
288the symbol at the specified address.
289
290* Trace support
291
292The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
293asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
294extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
295includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
296file tracepoint.c for more details.
297
298* MIPS simulator
299
300Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
301by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
302of most MIPS variants.
303
304* Sparc simulator
305
306Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
307by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
308Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
309
310* set architecture
311
312For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
313basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
314architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
315the possible architectures.
316
317*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
318
319* New native configurations
320
321Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
322M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
323PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
324PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
325PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
326RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
327
328* New targets
329
330ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
331I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
332MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
333MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
334PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
335Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
336Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
337
338* PowerPC simulator
339
340The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
341contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
342PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
343basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
344performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
345
346* Solaris 2.5
347
348GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
349
350* Windows 95/NT native
351
352GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
353To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
354which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
355Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
356ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
357
358* dont-repeat command
359
360If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
361command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
362useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
363extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
364
365* Send break instead of ^C
366
367The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
368rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
369GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
370
371* Remote protocol timeout
372
373The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
374that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
375to read from the target. The default value is 2.
376
377* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
378
379By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
380loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
381stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
382when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
383in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
384
385Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
386/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
387automatically on hpux10.
388
389* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
390
391Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
392
393* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
394
395When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
396may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
397the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
398every character. The default value is 1050.
399
400* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
401
402If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
403a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
404replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
405details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
406remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
407to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
408
409* Speedups for remote debugging
410
411GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
412the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
413and more efficient S-record downloading.
414
415* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
416
417GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
418Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
419
420*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
421
422* Psymtabs for XCOFF
423
424The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
425can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
426
427* Remote targets use caching
428
429Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
430remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
431it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
432debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
433off' turns the the data cache off.
434
435* Remote targets may have threads
436
437The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
438in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
439gdb/remote.c for details.
440
441* NetROM support
442
443If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
444support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
445acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
446write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
447support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
448another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
449sequence is something like
450
451 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
452 load <prog>
453 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
454
455* Macintosh host
456
457GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
458may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
459it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
460available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
461device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
462directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
463scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
464mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
465
466* Autoconf
467
468GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
469but does simplify configuration and building.
470
471* hpux10
472
473GDB now supports hpux10.
474
475*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
476
477* New native configurations
478
479x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
480x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
481NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
482Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
483
484* New targets
485
486A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
487HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
488CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
489PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
490WDC 65816 w65-*-*
491
492* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
493
494GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
495possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
496filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
497the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
498if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
499
500* Arguments to user-defined commands
501
502User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
503Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
504trivial example:
505define adder
506 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
507
508To execute the command use:
509adder 1 2 3
510
511Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
512Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
513use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
514
515* New `if' and `while' commands
516
517This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
518commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
519expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
520execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
521terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
522`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
523if the expression is zero.
524
525* Fortran source language mode
526
527GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
528Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
529variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
530with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
531Fortran compilers.
532
533* Better HPUX support
534
535Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
536running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
537processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
538for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
539that behavior do the following before running the program:
540
541 adb -w a.out
542 __dld_flags?W 0x5
543 control-d
544
545This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
546To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
547
548 adb -w a.out
549 __dld_flags?W 0x4
550 control-d
551
552You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
553the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
554external linkage.
555
556GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
557HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
558
559* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
560
561You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
562commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
563current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
564"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
565associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
566configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
567
568* New DOS host serial code
569
570This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
571no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
572a PC's serial port.
573
574*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
575
576* New "complete" command
577
578This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
579were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
580
581* Trailing space optional in prompt
582
583"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
584allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
585
586* Breakpoint hit counts
587
588"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
589has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
590can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
591to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
592less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
593that breakpoint.
594
595* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
596
597"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
598an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
599arrays actually contain only short strings.
600
601* Shared library breakpoints
602
603In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
604breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
605
606* Hardware watchpoints
607
608There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
609targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
610
611Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
612
613* Annotations
614
615Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
616and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
617
618* Improved Irix 5 support
619
620GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
621
622* Improved HPPA support
623
624GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
625
626* New native configurations
627
628Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
629HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
630Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
631RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
632
633* New targets
634
635OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
636MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
637Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
638
639* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
640
641There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
642This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
643
644* Fixes
645
646As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
647and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
648
649*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
650
651* Irix 5 is now supported
652
653* HPPA support
654
655GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
656to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
657GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
658of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
659can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
660
661
662*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
663
664* User visible changes:
665
666* Remote Debugging
667
668The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
669target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
670debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
671integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
672debugging info for the mips target).
673
674* DEC Alpha native support
675
676GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
677debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
678work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
679Alpha-specific notes.
680
681* Preliminary thread implementation
682
683GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
684
685* LynxOS native and target support for 386
686
687This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
688to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
689for details).
690
691* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
692
693This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
694mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
695call methods, ...etc.
696
697*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
698
699 * User visible changes:
700
701Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
702supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
703other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
704somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
705
706Filename completion now works.
707
708When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
709arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
710addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
711
712All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
713vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
714should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
715your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
716to be on the far side of a thin network line.
717
718 * DEC alpha support
719
720This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
721cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
722
723
724*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
725
726 * Testsuite
727
728This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
729The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
730via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
731
732 * C++ demangling
733
734'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
735emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
736Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
737disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
738use gdb with AT&T cfront.
739
740 * Simulators
741
742GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
743So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
744Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
745
746 * New targets supported
747
748H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
749H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
750SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
751Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
752IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
753
754Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
755version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
756GO32 memory extender.
757
758 * New remote protocols
759
760MIPS remote debugging protocol.
761
762 * New source languages supported
763
764This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
765used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
766into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
767
768
769*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
770
771 * HP Precision Architecture supported
772
773GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
774version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
775University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
776compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
777format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
778(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
779
780Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
781
782 * Faster and better demangling
783
784We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
785demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
786character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
787only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
788This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
789increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
790symbol lookups.
791
792`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
793from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
794compiler does not actually implement.
795
796 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
797
798In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
799inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
800recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
801very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
802The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
803circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
804fix.
805
806The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
807release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
808
809 * Improved configure script
810
811The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
812you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
813host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
814done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
815
816We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
817version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
818`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
819The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
820only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
821We hope to make this the default in a future release.
822
823 * Documentation improvements
824
825There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
826produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
827before submitting changes.
828
829The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
830M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
831`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
832you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
833a future texinfo-X.Y release.
834
835*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
836We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
837been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
838or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
839`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
840around this problem.
841
842 * New features
843
844GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
845the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
846`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
847the target program.
848
849The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
850how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
851
852 * New native hosts supported
853
854HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
855386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
856
857 * New targets supported
858
859AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
860
861 * New file formats supported
862
863BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
864HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
865
866 * Major bug fixes
867
868Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
869
870We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
871printf_filtered("%s") problems.
872
873We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
874for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
875release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
876
877You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
878will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
879
880We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
881for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
882especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
883libraries.
884
885The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
886information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
887command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
888any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
889when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
890
891 * Internal improvements
892
893GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
894debugging of multiple languages in the future.
895
896GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
897Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
898symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
899contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
900shared code that handles any of them.
901
902 * New command line options
903
904We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
905
906 * Mmalloc licensing
907
908The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
909General Public License.
910
911*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
912
913 * Host/native/target split
914
915GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
916hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
917target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
918local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
919ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
920
921The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
922GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
923is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
924code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
925any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
926built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
927handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
928
929GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
930It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
931plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
932
933 * New hosts supported
934
935HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
936386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
937386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
938
939 * New targets supported
940
941Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
94268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
943
944 * New native hosts supported
945
946386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
947 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
948386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
949
950 * New file formats supported
951
952BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
953supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
954format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
955
956 * New commands
957
958`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
959`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
960These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
961
962`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
963
964You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
965scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
966prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
967executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
968
969 * C++ improvements
970
971We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
972info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
973symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
974
975Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
976
977 * Major bug fixes
978
979The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
980fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
981by the compiler.
982
983We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
984support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
985
986John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
987slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
988that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
989purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
990the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
991mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
992
993Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
994about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
995completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
996we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
997
998 * AMD 29k support
999
1000A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1001specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1002calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1003usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1004in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1005
1006We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1007Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1008of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1009resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1010
1011 * Remote interfaces
1012
1013We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1014with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1015message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1016This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1017needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1018breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1019each instruction being stepped through.
1020
1021The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1022registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1023
1024There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1025find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1026Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1027processor with a serial port.
1028
1029 * Configuration
1030
1031Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1032`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1033supported, and what files each one uses.
1034
1035 * Library changes
1036
1037There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1038disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1039Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1040disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1041
1042The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1043Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1044can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1045grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1046
1047 * Documentation
1048
1049The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1050reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1051as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1052encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1053system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1054bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1055
1056And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1057
1058
1059*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1060
1061 * Better support for C++ function names
1062
1063GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1064names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1065(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1066single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1067Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1068
1069GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1070the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1071You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1072lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1073for the list of formats.
1074
1075 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1076
1077Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1078C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1079directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1080can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1081usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1082about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1083this problem.)
1084
1085 * New 'maintenance' command
1086
1087All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1088the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1089can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1090
1091 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1092 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1093 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1094 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1095 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1096 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1097
1098The following commands are new:
1099
1100 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1101 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1102 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1103
1104 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1105
1106We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1107(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1108be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1109read after argv processing.
1110
1111 * New hosts supported
1112
1113Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1114
1115Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1116
1117We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1118is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1119for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1120masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1121fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1122It costs extra.
1123
1124 * New targets supported
1125
1126Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1127
1128 * More smarts about finding #include files
1129
1130GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1131all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1132greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1133especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1134the one that contains your sources.
1135
1136We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1137breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1138try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1139
1140 * Interesting infernals change
1141
1142GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1143section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1144target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1145stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1146
1147 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1148
1149There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1150 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1151 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1152
1153See the ChangeLog for details.
1154
1155*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1156
1157 * New machines supported (host and target)
1158
1159IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1160
1161SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1162
1163 * New malloc package
1164
1165GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1166Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1167capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1168This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1169pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1170more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1171
1172 * info proc
1173
1174The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1175'help info proc' for details.
1176
1177 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1178
1179The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1180Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1181possible.
1182
1183 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1184
1185Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1186support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1187conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1188environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1189that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1190in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1191
1192 * Cross byte order fixes
1193
1194Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1195targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1196
1197 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1198
1199If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1200system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1201`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1202program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1203called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1204Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1205and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1206the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1207option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1208starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1209
1210You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1211the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1212information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1213slower, but makes future operations faster.
1214
1215The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1216build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1217A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1218use is:
1219
1220 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1221
1222The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1223It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1224shared across multiple host platforms.
1225
1226 * longjmp() handling
1227
1228GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1229siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1230all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1231platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1232
1233 * Solaris 2.0
1234
1235Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1236this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1237reading symbols.
1238
1239 * Bug fixes
1240
1241As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1242People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1243crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1244
1245*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1246
1247 * New machines supported (host and target)
1248
1249SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1250 (except core files)
1251BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1252Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1253
1254 * New machines supported (target)
1255
1256AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1257
1258 * C++ support
1259
1260GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1261The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1262per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1263
1264GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1265`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1266extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1267good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1268will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1269released.
1270
1271 * New features for SVR4
1272
1273GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1274shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1275only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1276
1277The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1278on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1279it prints the address mappings of the process.
1280
1281If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1282bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1283
1284 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1285
1286Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1287now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1288skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1289make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1290same code linked statically.
1291
1292 * New Getopt
1293
1294GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1295version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1296continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1297Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1298added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1299future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1300
1301 * Bugs fixed
1302
1303The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1304Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1305See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1306
1307
1308*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1309
1310 * New machines supported (host and target)
1311
1312Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1313NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1314Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1315
1316 * Almost SCO Unix support
1317
1318We had hoped to support:
1319SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1320(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1321that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1322about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1323
1324 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1325
1326GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1327debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1328is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1329send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1330reqired (if any).
1331
1332 * New Readline
1333
1334GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1335is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1336required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1337
1338 * Bugs fixed
1339
1340The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1341Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1342See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1343
1344 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1345
1346GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1347supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1348symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1349
1350Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1351mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1352debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1353mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1354version 2.
1355
1356Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1357really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1358line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1359variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1360situation somewhat.
1361
1362When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1363However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1364methods.
1365
1366We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1367DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1368encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1369
1370
1371*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1372
1373 * Improved configuration
1374
1375Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1376Porting BFD is simpler.
1377
1378 * Stepping improved
1379
1380The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1381of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1382in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1383function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1384
1385 * Bug fixing
1386
1387Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1388
1389 * New host supported (not target)
1390
1391Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1392
1393
1394*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1395
1396 * Multiple source language support
1397
1398GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1399It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1400and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1401language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1402You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1403`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1404
1405 * GDB and Modula-2
1406
1407GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1408currently under development at the State University of New York at
1409Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1410continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1411
1412Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1413debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1414symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1415
1416There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1417in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1418
1419 * set write on/off
1420
1421GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1422a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1423the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1424by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1425effect immediately.
1426
1427 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1428
1429When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1430shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1431The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1432examining core files.
1433
1434 * set listsize
1435
1436You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1437The default is 10.
1438
1439 * New machines supported (host and target)
1440
1441SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1442Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1443Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1444
1445 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1446
1447IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1448
1449 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1450
1451AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1452AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1453Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1454
1455 * New remote interfaces
1456
1457AMD 29000 Adapt
1458AMD 29000 Minimon
1459
1460
1461*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1462
1463 * New Facilities
1464
1465Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1466
1467Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1468target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1469is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1470remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1471remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1472also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1473using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1474stub on the target system.
1475
1476New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1477
1478GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1479library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1480object file types such as a.out and coff.
1481
1482There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1483refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1484
1485
1486 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1487
1488All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1489by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1490
1491For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1492``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1493Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1494
1495What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1496print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1497will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1498all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1499
1500confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1501 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1502 it is already running. Default is ON.
1503
1504editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1505 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1506 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1507 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1508 Default is ON.
1509
1510history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1511 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1512 or the value of the environment variable
1513 GDBHISTFILE.
1514
1515history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1516 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1517 HISTSIZE.
1518
1519history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1520 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1521 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1522
1523history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1524 history expansion will be performed on
1525 command line input. The default is OFF.
1526
1527radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1528 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1529 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1530
1531height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1532 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1533 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1534 variable TERM.
1535
1536width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1537 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1538 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1539 variable TERM.
1540
1541Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1542``set width'' instead.
1543
1544print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1545 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1546 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1547 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1548
1549print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1550 is OFF.
1551
1552print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1553 "raw" form if off.
1554
1555print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1556 like instructions.
1557
1558print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1559
1560
1561 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1562
1563The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1564new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1565are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1566window.
1567
1568
1569 * Support for Shared Libraries
1570
1571GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1572Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1573before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1574happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1575At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1576from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1577shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1578It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1579
1580sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1581 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1582 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1583
1584info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1585
1586
1587 * Watchpoints
1588
1589A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1590expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1591tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1592quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1593problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1594more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1595
1596watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1597
1598info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1599
1600delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1601disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1602enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1603
1604
1605 * C++ multiple inheritance
1606
1607When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1608for C++ programs.
1609
1610 * C++ exception handling
1611
1612Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1613ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1614the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1615handler's context).
1616
1617catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1618 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1619 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1620
1621info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1622 current stack frame.
1623
1624
1625 * Minor command changes
1626
1627The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1628command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1629is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1630
1631The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1632at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1633frames without printing.
1634
1635 * New directory command
1636
1637'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1638The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1639about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1640with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1641find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1642
1643 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1644
1645For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1646for more details.
1647
1648GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1649two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1650Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1651where the program that you are debugging will run.