]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git/blame - gdb/NEWS
range stepping: gdb
[thirdparty/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
SS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
2d450646
JB
4*** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
1e611234
PM
6* Python scripting
7
8 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
9
a1217d97
SL
10* New targets
11
12Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
13Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
14
bd712aed 15* New commands:
b340913d
TT
16catch rethrow
17 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
7d0c9981
DE
18maint check-psymtabs
19 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
20maint check-symtabs
21 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
22maint expand-symtabs
23 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 24
dccca75d
EZ
25show configuration
26 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
27
bd712aed
DE
28maint set|show per-command
29maint set|show per-command space
30maint set|show per-command time
31maint set|show per-command symtab
32 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
33
bd3eecc3
PA
34* New options
35
36set remote trace-status-packet
37show remote trace-status-packet
38 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
39
a1217d97
SL
40set debug nios2
41show debug nios2
42 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
43
c1e36e3e
PA
44set range-stepping
45show range-stepping
46 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
47
1c2e4450
PA
48* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
49 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
50 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
51 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
52 "set height 0".
53
dccca75d
EZ
54* New command-line options
55--configuration
56 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
57
d0353e76
YQ
58* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
59 buffer in Common Trace Format.
60
b292c783
JK
61* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
62 GDB command gcore.
63
6e72ca20
TT
64* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
65
b340913d
TT
66* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
67 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
68
69* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
70 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
71
d0353e76
YQ
72* MI changes
73
74 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
75 Trace Format now.
76
c5867ab6
HZ
77 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
78
0201faac
JB
79* New system-wide configuration scripts
80 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
81 configuration scripts for the following systems:
82 ** ElinOS
83 ** Wind River Linux
84
c1e36e3e
PA
85* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
86 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
87 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
88 below.
89
90* New remote packets
91
92vCont;r
93
94 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
95 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
96 involvemement at each single-step.
97
2d450646 98*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 99
59ea5688
MM
100* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
101 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
102 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
103 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
104
105set|show record full insn-number-max
106set|show record full stop-at-limit
107set|show record full memory-query
108
109* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
110 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
111 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
112 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
113 This new recording method can be enabled using:
114
115record btrace
116
117 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
118 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
119
120* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
121 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
122 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
123
124record instruction-history prints the execution history at
125 instruction granularity
126
127record function-call-history prints the execution history at
128 function granularity
129
543bf33d
AT
130* New native configurations
131
51d66578 132ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 133FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 134x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 135Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 136
249729c4
JB
137* New targets
138
51d66578
MS
139ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
140ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 141Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 142x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 143Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 144
e64e0392
DE
145* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
146 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
147 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
148 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
149 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
150 --data-directory command-line option.
151
07540c15
DE
152* New command line options:
153
154-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
155 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
156
e93a8774
TT
157* Removed command line options
158
159-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
160 Emacs.
161
53342f27
TT
162* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
163 type formatting.
164
451b7c33
TT
165* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
166
a72c3253
DE
167* Python scripting
168
169 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
170
d7de8e3c
TT
171 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
172
18a9fc12
TT
173 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
174
9a27f2c6
PK
175 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
176
bea883fd
SCR
177 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
178 of architecture in the Python API.
179
180 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
181 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
182
a72c3253
DE
183* New Python-based convenience functions:
184
185 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
186 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
187 ** $_strlen(str)
188 ** $_regex(str, regex)
189
f3c8a52a
JK
190* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
191 given an argument.
192
1605ef26
TT
193* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
194 default for GCC since November 2000.
195
504b36fd
YQ
196* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
197
f2a8bc8a
YQ
198* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
199 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
200
23a80689
JB
201* New configure options
202
203--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
204 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
205 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
206 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
207 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
208 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
209--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
210 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
211 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 212
d6b28940
TT
213* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
214
ab04a2af
TT
215catch signal
216 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
217 conditions to be attached.
218
d6b28940
TT
219maint info bfds
220 List the BFDs known to GDB.
221
8315665e
YPK
222python-interactive [command]
223pi [command]
224 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
225 and print the result of expressions.
226
227py [command]
228 "py" is a new alias for "python".
229
18a9fc12
TT
230enable type-printer [name]...
231disable type-printer [name]...
232 Enable or disable type printers.
233
aa9259cc
TS
234* Removed commands
235
236 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
237 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
238 instead.
239
53342f27
TT
240* New options
241
242set print type methods (on|off)
243show print type methods
244 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
245 The default is to show them.
246
247set print type typedefs (on|off)
248show print type typedefs
249 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
250 The default is to show them.
251
1b56eb55
JK
252set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
253show filename-display
254 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
255 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
256
e9f1758d
PA
257set trace-buffer-size
258show trace-buffer-size
259 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
260
a46c1e42
PA
261set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
262show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
263 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
264
be9a8770
PA
265set debug aarch64
266show debug aarch64
267 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
268 The default is off.
269
270set debug coff-pe-read
271show debug coff-pe-read
272 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
273 exported symbols.
274
275set debug mach-o
276show debug mach-o
277 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
278 processing.
279
280set debug notification
281show debug notification
282 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
283
5b9afe8a
YQ
284* MI changes
285
286 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
287 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
288 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
289 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
290 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
291 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
292 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
293 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
294 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
295 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
296 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 297 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 298 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
299 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
300 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
301 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
302 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
303 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
304 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
305 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
306 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
307 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
308 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
309 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
310 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 311
608e2dbb
TT
312* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
313 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
314 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
315 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
316
f6f899bf
HAQ
317* New remote packets
318
319QTBuffer:size
320 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
321 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
322
10782d74
MM
323Qbtrace:bts
324 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
325 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
326 qSupported query.
327
328Qbtrace:off
329 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
330 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
331
332qXfer:btrace:read
333 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
334 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
335
80c8d323 336*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 337
1b3371b1
L
338* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
339 for more x32 ABI info.
340
d0e64392
MR
341* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
342
4cc0665f
MR
343* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
344
85d4a676
SS
345* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
346 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
347 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
348 "info os files" lists file descriptors
349 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
350 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
351 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
352 "info os msg" lists message queues
353 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
354
55aa24fb
SDJ
355* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
356 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
357 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
358 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
359 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
360 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
361
72508ac0
PO
362* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
363 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
364 record/replay support.
365
16899756
DE
366* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
367
4795f398
DE
368* Python scripting
369
7d74f244
DE
370 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
371 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
372
4795f398
DE
373 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
374
50897289
TT
375 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
376 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
377
64e7d9dd
TT
378 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
379
380 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
381 the source at which the symbol was defined.
382
f0823d2c
TT
383 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
384 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
385 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
386 symbol's value.
387
7b282c5a
SCR
388 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
389 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
390
a20ee7a4
SCR
391 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
392 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
393 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
394
7efc75aa
SCR
395 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
396 object associated with a PC value.
397
ee0bf529
SCR
398 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
399 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
400
a766d390
DE
401* Go language support.
402 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
403 language.
404
e0f9f062
DE
405* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
406 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
407
217bff3e
JK
408* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
409 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
410
cafec441
TT
411* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
412 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
413 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
414 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
415 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
416 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
417
4aac40c8
TT
418* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
419 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
420 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
421 build/libcpp/expr.c.
422
d99bd577
UW
423* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
424 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
425
53fe1783
GB
426* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
427 since December 2007.
428
e41eec66
JB
429* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
430 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
431 command does. For instance:
432
433 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
434
435 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
436 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
437 created, using the "condition" command.
438
5808517f
YQ
439* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
440 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
441
481860b3
GB
442* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
443
444* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
445 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
446 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
447 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
448 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
449 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
450 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
451 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 452
156942c7
DE
453 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
454 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
455 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
456 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
457 the .gdb_index section.
458
927fbba6
JB
459* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
460
20388dd6
YQ
461* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
462 target.
463
f3e0e960
SS
464* MI changes
465
466 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
467
37ce89eb
SS
468 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
469
edcc5120
TT
470* New commands
471
e615022a
DE
472 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
473 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
474 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
475
edcc5120
TT
476 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
477 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
478
816338b5
SS
479 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
480 several hits.
481
57651221 482 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
483 C++ and Java objects.
484
06fc020f
SCR
485 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
486 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
487 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
488 configured with '--with-python'.
489
bf88dd68
JK
490 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
491 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
492 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
493 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
494 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
495 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
496 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
497
498 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
499 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
500 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
501 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
502
e7e0cddf
SS
503 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
504 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
505 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
506 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
507
9cb709b6
TT
508 ** "set print symbol"
509 "show print symbol"
510 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
511 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
512 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
513
2d4c29c5
TS
514* Deprecated commands
515
516 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
517 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
518
a58b110a
KB
519* New targets
520
521Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 522HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 523
72895ff6
LM
524* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
525 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
526 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
527 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
528 evaluates to true.
529
530* New options
531
4cc0665f
MR
532set mips compression
533show mips compression
534 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
535 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
536 mips16
537 micromips
538 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
539
72895ff6
LM
540set breakpoint condition-evaluation
541show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 542 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
543 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
544 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
545 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
546 target.
547
bf88dd68
JK
548set auto-load off
549 Disable auto-loading globally.
550
551show auto-load
552 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
553
554set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
555show auto-load gdb-scripts
556 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
557
558set auto-load python-scripts on|off
559show auto-load python-scripts
560 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
561
562set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
563show auto-load local-gdbinit
564 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
565
566set auto-load libthread-db on|off
567show auto-load libthread-db
568 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
569
7349ff92 570set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 571show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
572 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
573 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
574 of the directories listed by this option.
575 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
576
bccbefd2
JK
577set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
578show auto-load safe-path
579 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
580 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
581
4dc84fd1
JK
582set debug auto-load on|off
583show debug auto-load
584 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
585
d3ce09f5 586set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 587show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
588 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
589 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
590 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
591 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
592
593set dprintf-function <expr>
594show dprintf-function
595set dprintf-channel <expr>
596show dprintf-channel
597 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
598 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
599
d3ce09f5
SS
600set disconnected-dprintf on|off
601show disconnected-dprintf
602 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
603 after GDB disconnects.
604
6dea1fbd
JK
605* New configure options
606
7349ff92
JK
607--with-auto-load-dir
608 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
609 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
610 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
611 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
612 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 613
6dea1fbd
JK
614--with-auto-load-safe-path
615 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 616 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
617
618--without-auto-load-safe-path
619 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
620 security feature.
621
72895ff6
LM
622* New remote packets
623
74c48cbb
PA
624z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
625
72895ff6
LM
626 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
627 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
628 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
629 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
630
9b224c5e
PA
631QProgramSignals:
632
633 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
634 program without GDB involvement.
635
8320cc4f
JK
636* New command line options
637
638--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
639 before loading inferior.
640--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
641 execute it before loading inferior.
642
8837a20f
JB
643*** Changes in GDB 7.4
644
f8eba3c6
TT
645* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
646 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
647 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
648 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
649 inferior changes.
650
1bfeeb0f
JL
651* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
652 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
653
480a3f21
PW
654* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
655 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
656 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
657 target hardware watchpoint.
658
659 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
660 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
661 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
662 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
663
3a7bf607
PM
664* Python scripting
665
32d1c362 666 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 667 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
668 existing one.
669
3a7bf607 670 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
671 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
672 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
673 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
674 now "message", which just prints the error message without
675 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 676
baacfb07 677 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 678 Python API.
713389e0 679
fa3a4f15
PM
680 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
681 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 682 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
683 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
684 corresponding value.
685
5e239b84
PM
686 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
687 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
688 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
689 on GDB start-up.
690
9df2fbc4
PM
691 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
692 static_block will return the global and static blocks
693 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
694 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
695
457e09f0
DE
696 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
697
6839b47f
KP
698 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
699 "gdb.breakpoints".
700
cc72b2a2
KP
701 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
702 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
703 available in the CLI.
704
84ad80e6
PK
705 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
706 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
707 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
708 "some_type.items()".
709
20c168b5
KP
710 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
711 new object file.
712
03c3051a
PK
713 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
714 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
715 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
716 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
717 any anonymous fields.
718
7376e450
TT
719* MI changes
720
721 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
722 "solib-event".
723
724 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
725 "=breakpoint-modified".
726
727 ** New command -ada-task-info.
728
98a5dd13
DE
729* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
730 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
731 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
732 lives.
733
734 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
735 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
736 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
737 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
738 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
739
740 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
741 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
742
478aac75
DE
743* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
744 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
745 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
746 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
747 use this option to specify where to find it.
748
9c06b0b4
TJB
749* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
750 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
751 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
752 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
753 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
754 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
755 section in the user manual for more details.
756
03f2bd59
JK
757* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
758 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
759 become available after that.
760
71eba9c2 761* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 762
2bda9cc5
JK
763* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
764 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
765 gcc version 4.7.
766
ed59ded5
DE
767* New commands
768
769!SHELL COMMAND
770 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
771 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
772
9c06b0b4
TJB
773* Changed commands
774
775watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
776 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
777 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
778
dbaefcf7
DE
779info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
780 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
781 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
782
71eba9c2 783info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
784 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
785 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
786 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
787 name starts with a hyphen.
788
3065dfb6
SS
789collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
790 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
791 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
792 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
793 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
794 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
795 number of bytes that will be collected.
796
f196051f
SS
797tstart [NOTES]
798 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
799 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
800 setting the variable trace-notes.
801
802tstop [NOTES]
803 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
804 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
805 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
806 trace-stop-notes.
807
d248b706
KY
808* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
809 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
810 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
811 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
812 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
813 is running.
814
405f8e94
SS
815* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
816 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
817 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
818
2bda9cc5
JK
819* New options
820
45cfd468
DE
821set debug dwarf2-read
822show debug dwarf2-read
823 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
824 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
825
826set debug symtab-create
827show debug symtab-create
828 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
829 creation. The default is off.
830
baacfb07
PM
831set extended-prompt
832show extended-prompt
833 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
834 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
835 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
836 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
837 prompt is displayed.
838
2bda9cc5
JK
839set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
840show print entry-values
841 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
842 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
843 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
844
845set debug entry-values
846show debug entry-values
847 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
848 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
849
c011a4f4
DE
850set basenames-may-differ
851show basenames-may-differ
852 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
853 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
854 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
855 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
856 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
857 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
858 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
859 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
860
f196051f
SS
861set trace-user
862show trace-user
863set trace-notes
864show trace-notes
865 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
866 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
867 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
868 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
869
870set trace-stop-notes
871show trace-stop-notes
872 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
873 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
874 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
875 started by someone else.
876
d248b706
KY
877* New remote packets
878
879QTEnable
880
881 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
882
883QTDisable
884
885 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
886
f196051f
SS
887QTNotes
888
889 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
890
891qTP
892
893 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
894
405f8e94
SS
895qTMinFTPILen
896
897 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
898 be placed.
899
1a532630
PP
900* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
901 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
902
11315641
YQ
903* New targets
904
905Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
906
87326c78
DD
907* New Simulators
908
909Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
910
e8d56f18
JB
911*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
912
913* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
914
d6e00af6 915*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 916
60f98dde
MS
917* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
918 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
919 matches the given regular expression.
920
eee5b35e
DD
921* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
922
b716877b
AB
923* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
924 dumping the instruction opcodes.
925
aae1c79a
DE
926* New command line options
927
928-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
929 This is mostly for testing purposes.
930
a86caf66
DE
931* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
932 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
933
99e7ae30
DE
934* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
935 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
936 source path list instead of augmenting it.
937
4694da01
TT
938* GDB now understands thread names.
939
940 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
941 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
942
943 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
944 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
945
f4b8a18d
KW
946* OpenCL C
947 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
948 has been integrated into GDB.
949
585d1eb8
PM
950* Python scripting
951
da5d4055
PM
952 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
953 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
954 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
955
9a6f1302
PM
956 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
957 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
958 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
959 and allows for more dynamic content.
960
29703da4
PM
961 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
962 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
963 have an is_valid method.
964
350c6c65
PM
965 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
966 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
967 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
968
6e6fbe60
DE
969 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
970
585d1eb8
PM
971 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
972 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
973 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
974 that function like so:
975
976 result = some_value (10,20)
977
0e3509db
DE
978 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
979 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
980 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
981
7b51bc51
DE
982 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
983 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
984 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
985 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
986 New function: register_pretty_printer.
987
988 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
989 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
990
99e7ae30
DE
991 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
992
d8e22779
TT
993 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
994 selected thread.
995
4694da01
TT
996 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
997 holds the thread's name.
998
505500db
SW
999 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1000 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1001 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1002 The following events are currently supported:
1003 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1004 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1005 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1006
def98928
TT
1007* C++ Improvements:
1008
1009 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1010 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1011
1012 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1013
1014 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1015 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1016 was added to GCC 4.5.
1017
66cb8159
TT
1018 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1019 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1020 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1021 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1022 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1023 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1024
4aac0db7
UW
1025* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1026 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1027 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1028 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1029 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1030
283e6a52
TT
1031* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1032 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1033 execution to a label.
1034
1035* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1036 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1037 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1038 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1039
b56df873 1040* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1041 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1042 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1043 of scope.
1044
ae53ffa4
PA
1045* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1046
1047 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1048 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1049 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1050 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1051 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1052 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1053
1054 (gdb) info threads
1055 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1056
1057 While now you see this:
1058
1059 (gdb) info threads
1060 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1061
1062 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1063 dumps.
1064
1065 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1066 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1067 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1068 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1069
f1310107
TJB
1070* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1071 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1072 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1073 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1074 section in the user manual for more details.
1075
248c9dbc
JB
1076* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1077
1aee7009
JB
1078 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1079 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1080
eb826dc6
MF
1081 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1082
44603653
JB
1083* New native configurations
1084
1085ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1086
91021223
MF
1087* New targets:
1088
1089Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1090
6e1bb179
JB
1091* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1092 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1093 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1094 in the GDB user manual.
1095
50c97f38
TT
1096* Guile support was removed.
1097
448a92bf
MF
1098* New features in the GNU simulator
1099
1100 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1101
66ee2731
MF
1102 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1103
76b8507d 1104*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1105
ba25b921
PA
1106* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1107
1108 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1109 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1110 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1111 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1112 was always disabled for such configurations.
1113
4656f5c6
SW
1114* C++ Improvements:
1115
1116 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1117
1118 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1119 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1120 For example:
1121 namespace A
1122 {
1123 class B { };
1124 void foo (B) { }
1125 }
1126 ...
1127 A::B b
1128 foo(b)
1129 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1130 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1131 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1132
1133 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1134
1135 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1136 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1137 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1138 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1139 entry.
1140 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1141 mentioned flavors of operators.
1142
254e6b9e
DE
1143 ** static const class members
1144
1145 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1146 class definition has been fixed.
1147
711e434b
PM
1148* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1149
1150 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1151 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1152 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1153 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1154 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1155 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1156
0fb4aa4b
PA
1157* Static tracepoints
1158
1159 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1160 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1161 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1162 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1163 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1164 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1165 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1166 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1167 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1168 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1169 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1170 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1171 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1172 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1173 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1174 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1175 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1176 the "New remote packets" section below.
1177
ca11e899
SS
1178* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1179
1180 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1181 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1182 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1183 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1184
1185* Observer mode
1186
1187 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1188 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1189 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1190 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1191 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1192 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1193 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1194
1195* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1196 current thread.
1197
711e434b
PM
1198* New remote packets
1199
1200qGetTIBAddr
1201
1202 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1203
dde08ee1
PA
1204qRelocInsn
1205
1206 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1207 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1208 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1209 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1210 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1211 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1212
0fb4aa4b
PA
1213qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1214
1215 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1216
1217qTSTMat
1218
1219 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1220 program.
1221
1222qXfer:statictrace:read
1223
1224 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1225 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1226 to gdb's qSupported query.
1227
ca11e899
SS
1228QAllow
1229
1230 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1231
1232QTDPsrc
1233
1234 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1235 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1236
3f7b2faa
DE
1237* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1238 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1239 a directory.
1240
d337e9f0
PA
1241* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1242
0fb4aa4b
PA
1243 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1244 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1245 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1246 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1247
1248 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1249 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1250 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1251 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1252 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1253 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1254 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1255
1256 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1257 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1258
c24d0242
PM
1259 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1260
c8d5aac9
L
1261* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1262 it understands register description.
1263
7c953934
TT
1264* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1265
8685c86f
L
1266* X86 general purpose registers
1267
1268 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1269 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1270 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1271 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1272 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1273
95a42b64 1274* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1275 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1276 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1277 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1278 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1279 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1280
8bd10a10
CM
1281* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1282 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1283 in the specified file.
1284
ab38a727
PA
1285* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1286 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1287 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1288 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1289 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1290 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1291 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1292 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1293 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1294 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1295
6149aea9
PA
1296* New commands
1297
f1421989
HZ
1298eval template, expressions...
1299 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1300 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1301
ab38a727
PA
1302set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1303show target-file-system-kind
1304 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1305 names.
1306
6149aea9
PA
1307save breakpoints <filename>
1308 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1309 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1310 definitions, use the `source' command.
1311
1312`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1313is now deprecated.
1314
0fb4aa4b
PA
1315info static-tracepoint-markers
1316 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1317
1318strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1319 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1320 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1321
ca11e899
SS
1322set observer on|off
1323show observer
1324 Enable and disable observer mode.
1325
1326set may-write-registers on|off
1327set may-write-memory on|off
1328set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1329set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1330set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1331set may-interrupt on|off
1332 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1333 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1334 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1335 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1336 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1337 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1338 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1339
1340set record memory-query on|off
1341show record memory-query
1342 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1343 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1344
53a71c06
CR
1345* Changed commands
1346
1347disassemble
1348 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1349
f3e9a817
PM
1350* Python scripting
1351
9279c692
JB
1352** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1353 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1354 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1355 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1356 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1357
adc36818 1358** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1359 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1360 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1361 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1362
fa33c3cd 1363** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1364 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1365
1366** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1367
1368** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1369
967cf477
DE
1370** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1371
8a1ea21f
DE
1372** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1373 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1374 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1375
a7bdde9e
VP
1376* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1377there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1378tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1379regular breakpoints.
1380
05071a4d
PA
1381* New targets
1382
1383ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1384
6aecb9c2
JB
1385* D language support.
1386 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1387 language.
1388
431e49aa
TJB
1389* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1390 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1391 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1392 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1393 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1394
1395* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1396 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1397 conditions of the form:
1398
1399 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1400
1401 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1402 interface mentioned above.
1403
bfbf3774 1404*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1405
4eef138c
TT
1406* C++ Improvements
1407
1408 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1409
1410 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1411 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1412 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1413 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1414 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1415
4eef138c
TT
1416 ** Bug Fixes
1417
1418 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1419 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1420 qualified name.
1421
1422 ** Cast Operators
1423
1424 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1425 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1426
2d1c1221
ME
1427* New targets
1428
1429Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1430Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1431
1432* New Simulators
1433
1434Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1435Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1436
6c95b8df
PA
1437* Multi-program debugging.
1438
1439 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1440 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1441 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1442 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1443 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1444 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1445 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1446 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1447
d5551862
SS
1448* New tracing features
1449
1450 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1451
1452 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1453
1454 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1455 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1456 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1457 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1458 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1459 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1460 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1461 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1462 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1463 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1464
d5551862 1465 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1466
1467 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1468 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1469 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1470 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1471 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1472 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1473 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1474 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1475 the regular trace command.
1476
d5551862
SS
1477 ** Disconnected tracing
1478
1479 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1480 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1481 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1482 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1483 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1484
00bf0b85
SS
1485 ** Trace files
1486
1487 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1488 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1489 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1490 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1491 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1492 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1493 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1494
1495 ** Circular trace buffer
1496
1497 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1498 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1499 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1500 not be available for all target agents.
1501
21a0512e
PP
1502* Changed commands
1503
1504disassemble
1505 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1506 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1507
0fe7935b
DJ
1508info variables
1509 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1510 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1511
fb2e7cb4
JB
1512source
1513 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1514 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1515 support.
1516
1517 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1518 "set script-extension" (see below).
1519
6c95b8df
PA
1520* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1521
399cd161
MS
1522record save [<FILENAME>]
1523 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1524 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1525
1526record restore <FILENAME>
1527 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1528 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1529
6c95b8df
PA
1530add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1531 Add a new inferior.
1532
1533clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1534 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1535 inferior has loaded.
1536
1537remove-inferior ID
1538 Remove an inferior.
1539
1540maint info program-spaces
1541 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1542
9a7071a8
JB
1543set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1544show remote interrupt-sequence
1545 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1546 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1547 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1548 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1549 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1550
1551set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1552show remote interrupt-on-connect
1553 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1554 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1555 Linux kernel.
1556
1557set remotebreak [on | off]
1558show remotebreak
1559Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1560
f61e138d
SS
1561tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1562 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1563
1564info tvariables
1565 List trace state variables and their values.
1566
1567delete tvariable $NAME ...
1568 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1569
6da95a67
SS
1570teval EXPR, ...
1571 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1572 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1573
7a697b8d
SS
1574ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1575 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1576
b0f02ee9
JK
1577* New expression syntax
1578
1579 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1580 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1581
6c95b8df
PA
1582* New options
1583
1584set follow-exec-mode new|same
1585show follow-exec-mode
1586 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1587 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1588 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1589
236f1d4d
SS
1590set default-collect EXPR, ...
1591show default-collect
1592 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1593 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1594 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1595
d5551862
SS
1596set disconnected-tracing
1597show disconnected-tracing
1598 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1599 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1600 upon disconnection.
1601
4daf5ac0
SS
1602set circular-trace-buffer
1603show circular-trace-buffer
1604 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1605 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1606 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1607 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1608
fb2e7cb4
JB
1609set script-extension off|soft|strict
1610show script-extension
1611 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1612 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1613 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1614 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1615 evaluation failed.
1616 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1617
2b71fc8e
JB
1618set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1619show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1620 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1621 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1622 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1623 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1624 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1625 is on.
1626
de2e5182
TT
1627* Python API Improvements
1628
1629 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1630 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1631 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1632
1633 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1634 `is_base_class' attribute.
1635
1636 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1637
1638 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1639 evaluate an expression.
1640
f61e138d
SS
1641* New remote packets
1642
1643QTDV
1644 Define a trace state variable.
1645
1646qTV
1647 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1648
d5551862
SS
1649QTDisconnected
1650 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1651
4daf5ac0
SS
1652QTBuffer:circular
1653 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1654
d5551862
SS
1655qTfP, qTsP
1656 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1657
2d483d34
MS
1658* Bug fixes
1659
1660Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1661
6e0e5977
JB
1662Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1663much more reliable. In particular:
1664 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1665 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1666 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1667 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1668 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1669 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1670 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1671 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1672 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1673 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1674 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1675 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1676 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1677 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1678 non-threaded programs.
1679
93c26624
JK
1680PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1681This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1682libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1683executable program.
1684
abc7453d 1685*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1686
4efc6507
DE
1687* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1688dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1689them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1690for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1691"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1692
782b2b07
SS
1693* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1694breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1695or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1696the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1697for tracepoint actions.
1698
53a71c06
CR
1699* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1700raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1701modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1702
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1703* Process record and replay
1704
1705 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1706 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1707 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1708 execute commands.
1709
64644d9b
MS
1710* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1711step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1712set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1713reverse execution.
1714
b9412953
DD
1715* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1716feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
17172.6.28 or later.
1718
6c7a06a3
TT
1719* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1720target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1721char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1722literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1723U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1724`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1725system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1726the installation instructions for more information.
1727
f1838a98
UW
1728* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1729remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1730with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1731the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1732
55333a84
DE
1733* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1734and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1735
7f6a6314
PM
1736* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1737now complete on file names.
1738
65d12d83
TT
1739* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1740completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1741For instance, consider:
1742
1743 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1744 # struct example variable;
1745 (gdb) p variable.
1746
1747If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1748completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1749
edb3359d
DJ
1750* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1751the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1752
2fae03e8
TT
1753* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1754operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1755macros.
1756
47a3467a 1757* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1758the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1759implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1760
1761* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1762registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1763can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1764and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1765
08388c79
DE
1766* New remote packets
1767
1768qSearch:memory:
1769 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1770
a6f3e723
SL
1771QStartNoAckMode
1772 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1773 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1774 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1775
d7713ae0
EZ
1776vKill
1777 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1778 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1779
07e059b5
VP
1780qXfer:osdata:read
1781 Obtains additional operating system information
1782
47a3467a
PA
1783qXfer:siginfo:read
1784qXfer:siginfo:write
1785 Read or write additional signal information.
1786
060871df
PA
1787* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1788
1789 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1790 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1791 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1792
c055b101 1793* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1794DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1795
1796* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1797and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1798`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1799
31fffb02
CS
1800* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1801with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1802
88d8a8e0
JB
1803* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1804
7f99b190
JB
1805* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1806
ccd213ac
DJ
1807* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1808which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1809
1fddbabb 1810* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1811list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1812
a0ef4274
DJ
1813* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1814conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1815have also been fixed.
1816
bfb8797a 1817* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1818From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1819are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1820
71c25dea
TT
1821* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1822example, given:
1823
1824 template<typename T> class C { };
1825 C<char const *> c;
1826
1827GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1828
1829 ptype C<char const *>
1830 ptype C<char const*>
1831 ptype C<const char *>
1832 ptype C<const char*>
1833
ccd213ac
DJ
1834* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1835
1836 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1837 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1838
7ae0e2a2
UW
1839 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1840 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1841 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1842
a6f3e723
SL
1843 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1844 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1845
da8bd9a3
DJ
1846 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1847 gdbserver.
1848
d70e31dd
DE
1849 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1850 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1851
1852 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1853 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1854 as appropriate.
1855
d57a3c85
TJB
1856* Python scripting
1857
1858 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1859 available is determined at configure time.
1860
d8906c6f
TJB
1861 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1862
aadc346a
JB
1863* Ada tasking support
1864
1865 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1866 been introduced:
1867
1868 info tasks
1869 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1870 info task N
1871 Print detailed information about task number N.
1872 task
1873 Print the task number of the current task.
1874 task N
1875 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1876
adb483fe
DJ
1877* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1878add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1879
2277426b
PA
1880* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1881
1882 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1883 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1884 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1885 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1886 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1887 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1888 below.
1889
08d16641
PA
1890* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1891"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1892information.
1893
e35359c5
UW
1894* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1895to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1896architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1897See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1898more information.
1899
85e747d2
UW
1900* Multi-architecture debugging.
1901
1902 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1903 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1904 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1905 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1906 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1907
1908* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1909use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1910Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1911powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1912--enable-targets configure option.
1913
11ade57a
PA
1914* Non-stop mode debugging.
1915
1916 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1917 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1918 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1919 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1920 section in the user manual for more information.
1921
1922 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1923 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1924 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1925 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1926 extensions on linux targets.
1927
d7713ae0 1928* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1929
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1930catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1931 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1932 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1933 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1934 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1935 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1936 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1937 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1938 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1939
08388c79
DE
1940find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1941 val1 [, val2, ...]
1942 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1943
d57a3c85
TJB
1944maint set python print-stack
1945maint show python print-stack
1946 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1947
1948python [CODE]
1949 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1950
d7713ae0
EZ
1951macro define
1952macro list
1953macro undef
1954 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1955 interactively.
1956
1957info os processes
1958 Show operating system information about processes.
1959
2277426b
PA
1960info inferiors
1961 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1962
1963inferior NUM
1964 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1965
1966detach inferior NUM
1967 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1968
1969kill inferior NUM
1970 Kill inferior number NUM.
1971
d7713ae0
EZ
1972* New options
1973
3285f3fe
UW
1974set spu stop-on-load
1975show spu stop-on-load
1976 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1977
ff1a52c6
UW
1978set spu auto-flush-cache
1979show spu auto-flush-cache
1980 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1981 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1982
d7713ae0
EZ
1983set sh calling-convention
1984show sh calling-convention
1985 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1986
e0a3ce09 1987set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1988show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1989 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1990
1991set disassemble-next-line
1992show disassemble-next-line
1993 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1994 the debuggee stops.
1995
1996set remote noack-packet
1997show remote noack-packet
1998 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1999 under "New remote packets."
2000
2001set remote query-attached-packet
2002show remote query-attached-packet
2003 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2004
2005set remote read-siginfo-object
2006show remote read-siginfo-object
2007 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2008 packet.
2009
2010set remote write-siginfo-object
2011show remote write-siginfo-object
2012 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2013 packet.
2014
40ab02ce
MS
2015set remote reverse-continue
2016show remote reverse-continue
2017 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2018
2019set remote reverse-step
2020show remote reverse-step
2021 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2022
d7713ae0
EZ
2023set displaced-stepping
2024show displaced-stepping
2025 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2026 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2027 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2028
2029set debug displaced
2030show debug displaced
2031 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2032
2033maint set internal-error
2034maint show internal-error
2035 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2036
2037maint set internal-warning
2038maint show internal-warning
2039 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2040
ccd213ac
DJ
2041set exec-wrapper
2042show exec-wrapper
2043unset exec-wrapper
2044 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2045
aad4b048
JB
2046set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2047show multiple-symbols
2048 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2049 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2050 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2051
74960c60
VP
2052set breakpoint always-inserted
2053show breakpoint always-inserted
2054 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2055 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2056 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2057
0428b8f5
DJ
2058set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2059show arm fallback-mode
2060set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2061show arm force-mode
2062 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2063 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2064 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2065 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2066
10568435
JK
2067set disable-randomization
2068show disable-randomization
2069 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2070 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2071 multiple debugging sessions.
2072
d7713ae0
EZ
2073set non-stop
2074show non-stop
2075 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2076 a breakpoint.
2077
b3eb342c 2078set target-async
d7713ae0 2079show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2080 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2081 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2082 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2083 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2084
6c7a06a3
TT
2085set target-wide-charset
2086show target-wide-charset
2087 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2088 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2089
84603566
SL
2090set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2091show tcp auto-retry
2092set tcp connect-timeout
2093show tcp connect-timeout
2094 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2095 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2096 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2097
17a37d48
PP
2098set libthread-db-search-path
2099show libthread-db-search-path
2100 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2101 libthread_db.
2102
d4db2f36
PA
2103set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2104show schedule-multiple
2105 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2106 the current process.
2107
4e5d721f
DE
2108set stack-cache
2109show stack-cache
2110 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2111 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2112 affecting correctness.
2113
910c5da8
JB
2114set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2115show interactive-mode
2116 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2117 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2118 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2119 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2120 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2121
2277426b
PA
2122* Removed commands
2123
2124info forks
2125 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2126 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2127 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2128 command.
2129
2130fork NUM
2131 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2132 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2133 alias for the `fork' command.
2134
2135process PID
2136 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2137 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2138 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2139
2140delete fork NUM
2141 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2142 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2143 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2144 fork' command.
2145
2146detach fork NUM
2147 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2148 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2149 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2150 fork' command.
2151
a80b95ba
TG
2152* New native configurations
2153
2154x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2155
b8bfd3ed
JB
2156x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2157
75a2d5e7
TT
2158* New targets
2159
c28c63d8 2160Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2161x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2162x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2163S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2164
6de3146c
PA
2165* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2166 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2167
d5cbbe6e
JB
2168* Removed commands
2169
2170catch load
2171catch unload
2172 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2173
75feb17d 2174*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2175
af5ca30d
NH
2176* New native configurations
2177
2178NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2179Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2180
2181* New targets
2182
2183NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2184Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2185
7a404eba
PA
2186* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2187
2188 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2189 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2190 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2191 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2192
430ebac9
PA
2193* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2194(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2195
fe6fbf8b 2196* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2197is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2198
2199* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2200including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2201and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2202
10665d76
JB
2203* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2204accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2205more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2206
7cc46491
DJ
2207* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2208
d71340b8
DJ
2209* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2210registers on PowerPC targets.
2211
523c4513
DJ
2212* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2213targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2214
a6b151f1
DJ
2215* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2216commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2217
2d717e4f
DJ
2218* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2219extended-remote mode.
2220
24a836bd 2221* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2222The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2223error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2224The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2225
d0c678e6
UW
2226* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2227building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2228target architectures.
2229
d64a946d
TJB
2230* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2231Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2232now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2233stored in two consecutive float registers.
2234
ee163bf5
VP
2235* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2236breakpoints now.
2237
b93b6ca7 2238* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2239Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2240include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2241 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2242 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2243 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2244 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2245 of an assignment
2246 - Improved command completion in Ada
2247 - Several bug fixes
2248
d001be7a
DJ
2249* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2250process.
2251
a6b151f1
DJ
2252* New commands
2253
6d53d0af
JB
2254set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2255show print frame-arguments
2256 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2257 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2258
a6b151f1
DJ
2259remote put
2260remote get
2261remote delete
2262 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2263
2264* New MI commands
2265
2266-target-file-put
2267-target-file-get
2268-target-file-delete
2269 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2270
2271* New remote packets
2272
2273vFile:open:
2274vFile:close:
2275vFile:pread:
2276vFile:pwrite:
2277vFile:unlink:
2278 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2279
2d717e4f
DJ
2280vAttach
2281 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2282 mode.
2283
2284vRun
2285 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2286
8d5f9c6f 2287*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2288
19d378fc
MS
2289* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2290bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2291Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2292
3a40aaa0
UW
2293* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2294symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2295-Bsymbolic linker option.
2296
a6ec25f2
BW
2297* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2298recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2299is not supported.
2300
6dd09645
JB
2301* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2302frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2303
c9bb8148
DJ
2304* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
230532-bit or 64-bit register values.
2306
0d5de010
DJ
2307* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2308
23181151
DJ
2309* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2310target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2311a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2312
ea37ba09
DJ
2313* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2314automatically displayed as character or string data.
2315
2316* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2317arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2318as strings.
e1f48ead 2319
123dc839
DJ
2320* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2321for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2322only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2323
05a4558a
DJ
2324* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2325iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2326
7c963485
PA
2327* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2328ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2329has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2330
b18be20d
DJ
2331* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2332
0ca420ce
UW
2333* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2334
31d99776
DJ
2335* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2336layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2337segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2338
a4642986
MR
2339* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2340immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2341
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2342* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2343"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2344packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2345where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2346Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2347
2348* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2349(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2350
2351* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2352according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2353
c9bb8148
DJ
2354* New commands
2355
23776285
MR
2356set remoteflow
2357show remoteflow
2358 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2359 when debugging using remote targets.
2360
c9bb8148
DJ
2361set mem inaccessible-by-default
2362show mem inaccessible-by-default
2363 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2364 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2365 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2366 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2367 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2368
2369set breakpoint auto-hw
2370show breakpoint auto-hw
2371 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2372 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2373 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2374 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2375 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2376 including "next" and "finish".
2377
0e420bd8
JB
2378catch exception
2379catch exception unhandled
2380 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2381
2382catch assert
2383 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2384
f822c95b
DJ
2385set sysroot
2386show sysroot
2387 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2388 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2389 an alias to "set sysroot".
2390
83cc5c53
UW
2391info spu
2392 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2393 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2394 architecture.
2395
bd372731
MK
2396* New native configurations
2397
2398OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2399
23181151
DJ
2400set tdesc filename
2401unset tdesc filename
2402show tdesc filename
2403 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2404 not query the target for its built-in description.
2405
c9bb8148
DJ
2406* New targets
2407
54fe9172 2408OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2409MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2410Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2411
6dd09645
JB
2412* New remote packets
2413
2414QPassSignals:
2415 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2416 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2417
23181151
DJ
2418qXfer:features:read:
2419 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2420 features.
6dd09645 2421
83cc5c53
UW
2422qXfer:spu:read:
2423qXfer:spu:write:
2424 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2425 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2426
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2427qXfer:libraries:read:
2428 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2429 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2430 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2431 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2432
483367ee
DJ
2433* Removed targets
2434
2435Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2436
d08950c4
UW
2437alpha*-*-osf1*
2438alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2439d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2440hppa*-*-hiux*
2441i[34567]86-ncr-*
2442i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2443i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2444i[34567]86-*-netware*
2445i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2446i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2447i[34567]86-*-sco*
2448i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2449i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2450i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2451i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2452i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2453i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2454i[34567]86-*-isc*
2455m68*-cisco*-*
2456m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2457mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2458rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2459sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2460
7ce59000
DJ
2461* Other removed features
2462
2463target abug
2464target cpu32bug
2465target est
2466target rom68k
2467
2468 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2469
ea35711c
DJ
2470target hms
2471target e7000
2472target sh3
2473target sh3e
2474
2475 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2476 H8/300.
2477
2478target ocd
2479
2480 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2481 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2482 interfaces.
2483
7ce59000
DJ
2484DWARF 1 support
2485
2486 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2487 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2488
54d61198
DJ
2489Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2490
2491 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2492 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2493 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2494 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2495
ea35711c
DJ
2496MIPS ".pdr" sections
2497
2498 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2499 in debugging information.
2500
2501Scheme support
2502
2503 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2504 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2505
1a69e1e4
DJ
2506set mips stack-arg-size
2507set mips saved-gpreg-size
2508
2509 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2510
6dd09645 2511*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2512
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2513* New targets
2514
2515Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2516Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2517
6aec2e11
DJ
2518* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2519(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2520running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2521
2522* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2523Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2524supported.
2525
17218d91
DJ
2526* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2527broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2528
9ebce043
DJ
2529* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2530stub provides the required support.
2531
7d3d3ece
DJ
2532* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2533longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2534
4f8253f3
JB
2535* New commands
2536
2537set substitute-path
2538unset substitute-path
2539show substitute-path
2540 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2541 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2542 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2543 between compilation and debugging.
2544
9fa66fd7
AS
2545set trace-commands
2546show trace-commands
2547 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2548 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2549 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2550
1f5befc1
DJ
2551* REMOVED features
2552
2553The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2554
2ec3381a
DJ
2555Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2556an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2557
3d00d119
DJ
2558The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2559
be2a5f71
DJ
2560* New remote packets
2561
2562qSupported:
2563 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2564 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2565 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2566 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2567 target.
2568
0876f84a
DJ
2569qXfer:auxv:read:
2570 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2571 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2572
9ebce043
DJ
2573qXfer:memory-map:read:
2574 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2575 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2576
2577vFlashErase:
2578vFlashWrite:
2579vFlashDone:
2580 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2581
0876f84a
DJ
2582* Removed remote packets
2583
2584qPart:auxv:read:
2585 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2586 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2587
e374b601 2588*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2589
96309189
MS
2590* New targets
2591
2592Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2593
2594Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2595
53e5f3cf
AS
2596* New commands
2597
2598init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2599 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2600
ac264b3b
MS
2601The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2602
2603checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2604
2605restart <n> Return the program state to a
2606 previously saved state.
2607
2608info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2609
2610delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2611
2612set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2613 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2614
2615info forks List forks of the user program that
2616 are available to be debugged.
2617
2618fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2619 forks of the user program that are
2620 available to be debugged.
2621
2622delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2623 that are available to be debugged (and
2624 kill the forked process).
2625
2626detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2627 that are available to be debugged (and
2628 allow the process to continue).
2629
3950dc3f
NS
2630* New architecture
2631
2632Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2633
0ea3f30e
DJ
2634* Improved Windows host support
2635
2636GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2637native console support, and remote communications using either
2638network sockets or serial ports.
2639
f79daebb
GM
2640* Improved Modula-2 language support
2641
2642GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2643basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2644pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2645printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2646written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2647GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2648
acab6ab2
MM
2649* REMOVED features
2650
2651The ARM rdi-share module.
2652
f4267320
DJ
2653The Netware NLM debug server.
2654
53e5f3cf 2655*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2656
e0ecbda1
MK
2657* New native configurations
2658
02a677ac 2659OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2660OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2661
d64a6579
KB
2662* New targets
2663
2664Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2665
b33a6190
AS
2666* New command line options
2667
2668--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2669--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2670 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2671--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2672 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2673 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2674 with the --command (-x) option.
2675
11dced61
AC
2676* Deprecated commands removed
2677
2678The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2679removed:
2680
2681 Command Replacement
2682 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2683 othernames set arm disassembler
2684 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2685 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2686 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2687 regs info registers
2688
6fe85783
MK
2689* New BSD user-level threads support
2690
2691It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2692library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2693configurations are:
2694
2695FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2696FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2697OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2698
2699Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2700are not yet supported.
2701
5260ca71
MS
2702* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2703(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2704
e84ecc99
AC
2705* REMOVED configurations and files
2706
2707VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2708Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2709National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2710
31e35378
JB
2711* New "set print array-indexes" command
2712
2713After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2714when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2715behavior.
2716
e85e5c83
MK
2717* VAX floating point support
2718
2719GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2720
d91e9901
AS
2721* User-defined command support
2722
2723In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2724to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2725section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2726
f2cb65ca
MC
2727*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2728
f47b1503
AS
2729* New command line option
2730
2731GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2732debugging.
2733
f2cb65ca
MC
2734* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2735
2736GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2737information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2738by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2739proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2740to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2741
d08c0230
AC
2742* Internationalization
2743
2744When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2745internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2746continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2747
117ea3cf
PH
2748* Ada
2749
2750Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2751implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2752into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2753
d08c0230
AC
2754* New native configurations
2755
2756GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2757
2758* Remote 'p' packet
2759
2760GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2761packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2762
2763* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2764
2765GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2766The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2767features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2768i386 application).
2769
2770GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2771compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2772continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2773configurations:
2774
2775hppa-*-hpux
2776ia64-*-aix
2777mips-*-irix*
2778*-*-lynx
2779mips-*-linux-gnu
2780sds protocol
2781xdr protocol
2782powerpc bdm protocol
2783
2784Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2785made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2786
2787* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2788
2789Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2790been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2791configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2792permanently REMOVED.
2793
2794h8300-*-*
2795mcore-*-*
2796mn10300-*-*
2797ns32k-*-*
2798sh64-*-*
2799v850-*-*
2800
ebb7c577
AC
2801*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2802
2803* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2804
2805When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2806heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2807been fixed.
2808
2809* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2810
2811When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2812fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2813IRIX long double values).
2814
2815* VAX and "next"
2816
2817A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2818command. This problem has been fixed.
2819
860660cb 2820*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2821
0dea2468
AC
2822* Fix for ``many threads''
2823
2824On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2825rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2826error message:
2827
2828 ptrace: No such process.
2829 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2830
2831This problem has been fixed.
2832
2c07db7a
AC
2833* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2834
2835Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2836GDB to dump core).
2837
c23968a2
JB
2838* New ``start'' command.
2839
2840This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2841
71009278
MK
2842* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2843
2844Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2845live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2846platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2847
2848FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2849FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2850NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2851NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2852NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2853OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2854OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2855OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2856OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2857
3c0b7db2
AC
2858* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2859
2860Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2861These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2862of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2863call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2864signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2865
73cc75f3
AC
2866Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2867features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2868include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2869
7243600a
BF
2870* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2871
6f606e1c
MK
2872* New native configurations
2873
97dc871c 2874GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2875OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2876OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2877OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2878OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2879NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2880OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2881
a1b461bf
AC
2882* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2883
2884GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2885The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2886including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2887migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2888compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2889work, was also included.
2890
2891GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2892module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2893
2894h8300-*-*
2895mcore-*-*
2896mn10300-*-*
2897ns32k-*-*
2898sh64-*-*
2899v850-*-*
2900xstormy16-*-*
2901
2902Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2903made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2904
3c7012f5
AC
2905* REMOVED configurations and files
2906
2907Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2908Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2909Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2910Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2911Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2912AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2913Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2914decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2915riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2916sonymips mips-sony-*
2917sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2918
e5fe55f7
AC
2919*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2920
2921* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2922
2923The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2924GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2925command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2926program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2927with GDB".
2928
2929* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2930
2931Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2932libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2933cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2934GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2935shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2936the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2937are created.
2938
2939Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2940
2941* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2942
2943The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2944non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2945compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2946
2947* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2948
2949Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2950wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2951
2952* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2953
2954The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2955permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2956systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2957
2958* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2959
2960Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2961has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2962
2963* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2964
2965GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2966its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2967panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2968
2969* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2970
2971When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2972by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2973not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2974
faae5abe 2975*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2976
9175c9a3
MC
2977* Removed --with-mmalloc
2978
2979Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2980conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2981
3cc87ec0
MK
2982* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2983
2984The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2985the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2986and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2987you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2988
f0424ef6
MK
2989* Revised SPARC target
2990
2991The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2992FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2993support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2994from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2995(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2996
59659be2
ILT
2997* New C++ demangler
2998
2999GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3000names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3001with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3002programs.
3003
9e08b29b
DJ
3004* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3005
3006GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3007arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3008encountered these.
3009
8dfe8985
DC
3010* C++ nested types and namespaces
3011
3012GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3013improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3014is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3015Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3016namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3017"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3018frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3019if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3020GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3021
cced5e27
MK
3022* New native configurations
3023
3024NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3025OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3026OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3027OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3028OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3029
b4b4b794
KI
3030* New debugging protocols
3031
3032M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3033
7989c619
AC
3034* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3035
3036The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3037and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3038tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3039
5994185b
AC
3040* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3041
3042Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3043been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3044configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3045permanently REMOVED.
3046
3047Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3048Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3049Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3050Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3051Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3052AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3053Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3054decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3055riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3056sonymips mips-sony-*
3057sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3058
0ddabb4c
AC
3059* REMOVED configurations and files
3060
3061SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3062SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3063Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3064Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3065H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3066HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3067HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3068HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3069PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3070386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3071Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3072 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3073 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3074SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3075SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3076Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3077Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3078
c7f1390e
DJ
3079*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3080
1fe43d45
AC
3081* Objective-C
3082
3083Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3084integrated into GDB.
3085
e6beb428
AC
3086* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3087
3088DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3089information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3090By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3091backtraces.
3092
3093The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3094have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3095DWARF 2 CFI support.
3096
3097* Hosted file I/O.
3098
3099GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3100file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3101remote protocol documentation for details.
3102
3103* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3104
3105All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3106architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3107to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3108ppc32 on ppc64).
3109
3110* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3111
3112GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3113per-thread variables.
3114
3115* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3116
3117GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3118GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3119
3120* Separate debug info.
3121
3122GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3123automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3124of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3125system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3126and optional debug files.
3127
3128* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3129
3130DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3131describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3132debugger.
3133
3134GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3135for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3136
3137* Java
3138
3139A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3140Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3141considered "useable".
3142
85f8f974
DJ
3143* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3144
3145The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3146commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3147kernel.
3148
0fac0b41
DJ
3149* GDB supports logging output to a file
3150
3151There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3152used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3153
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3154* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3155
3156The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3157disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3158command.
3159
e286caf2 3160* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3161
3162The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3163registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3164
d28f9cdf
DJ
3165* Profiling support
3166
3167A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3168be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3169session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3170"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3171data, for more informative profiling results.
3172
da0f9dcd
AC
3173* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3174
3175The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3176option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3177"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3178
3179Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3180removed.
3181
fb9b6b35
JJ
3182Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3183Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3184Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3185 in a subsequent -var-update.
3186
954a4db8
MK
3187* New native configurations.
3188
3189FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3190
6760f9e6
JB
3191* Multi-arched targets.
3192
b4263afa 3193HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3194Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3195
1b831c93
AC
3196* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3197
3198Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3199been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3200configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3201permanently REMOVED.
3202
8b0e5691 3203Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3204Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3205H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3206HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3207HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3208HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3209PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3210Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3211 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3212 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3213Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3214Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3215
5835abe7
NC
3216* REMOVED configurations and files
3217
3218V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3219Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3220IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3221i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3222i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3223i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3224HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3225 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3226 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3227Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3228Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3229Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3230OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3231I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3232
a094c6fb
AC
3233* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3234
3235The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3236the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3237context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3238address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3239The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3240
299ffc64 3241*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3242
46248966
AC
3243* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3244
3245When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3246`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3247in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3248library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3249shared libs like mad''.
3250
b9d14705 3251* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3252
b9d14705
DJ
3253Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3254the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3255arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3256powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3257
e0e9281e
JB
3258* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3259
3260GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3261and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3262they expand.
3263
dd73b9bb
AC
3264The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3265invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3266
3267The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3268macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3269
e0e9281e
JB
3270Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3271information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3272your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3273information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3274
2250ee0c
CV
3275* Multi-arched targets.
3276
6e3ba3b8
JT
3277DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3278DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3279NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3280National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3281Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3282Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3283
cd9bfe15 3284* New targets.
e33ce519 3285
456f8b9d
DB
3286Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3287
e33ce519 3288
da8ca43d
JT
3289* New native configurations
3290
3291Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3292SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3293MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3294UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3295
cd9bfe15
AC
3296* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3297
3298Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3299been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3300configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3301permanently REMOVED.
3302
92eb23c5 3303Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3304OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3305IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3306Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3307Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3308Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3309i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3310i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3311i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3312HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3313 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3314 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3315I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3316
db034ac5
AC
3317* OBSOLETE languages
3318
3319CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3320
cd9bfe15
AC
3321* REMOVED configurations and files
3322
3323AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3324A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3325AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3326AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3327AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3328
3329testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3330
20f01a46
DH
3331* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3332
3333This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3334commands. The default is 1024.
3335
a5941fbf
MK
3336* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3337
3338Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3339
89743e04
MS
3340* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3341
3342These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3343to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3344from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3345
9fb14e79
JB
3346* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3347
3348The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3349including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3350of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3351
2037aebb
AC
3352*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3353
3354* New targets.
3355
3356Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3357
3358* Bug fixes
3359
3360gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3361mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3362Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3363
3364gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3365dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3366Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3367
3368Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3369Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3370By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3371
3372i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3373avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3374By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3375
37057839 3376*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3377
1a703748
MS
3378* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3379
3380This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3381really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3382In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3383target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3384This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3385(notably embedded) targets.
3386
cefd4ef5
MS
3387* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3388
55241689
AC
3389This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3390process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3391GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3392hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3393
352ed7b4
MS
3394* New command line option
3395
3396GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3397
3398* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3399
3400There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3401command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3402a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3403be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3404open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3405issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3406a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3407it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3408GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3409is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3410
fe419ffc
RE
3411* Changes in ARM configurations.
3412
3413Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3414configuration is fully multi-arch.
3415
eb7cedd9
MK
3416* New native configurations
3417
fe419ffc 3418ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3419x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3420AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3421Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3422
c9f63e6b
CV
3423* New targets
3424
3425Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3426
9b4ff276
AC
3427* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3428
3429Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3430been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3431configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3432permanently REMOVED.
3433
3434AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3435A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3436AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3437AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3438AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3439
b4ceaee6 3440testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3441
e2caac18
AC
3442* REMOVED configurations and files
3443
3444TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3445WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3446PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3447PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3448PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3449Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3450Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3451 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3452SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3453Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3454Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3455ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3456Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3457
c2a727fa
TT
3458* Changes to command line processing
3459
3460The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3461for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3462
467d8519
TT
3463* Changes to key bindings
3464
3465There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3466
7072a954
AC
3467*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3468
3469Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3470
3471Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3472corrupted.
3473
3474Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3475
3476Numerous documentation fixes.
3477
3478Numerous testsuite fixes.
3479
34f47bc4 3480*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3481
3482* New native configurations
3483
3484Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3485x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3486MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3487MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3488ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3489s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3490
bf64bfd6
AC
3491* New targets
3492
def90278 3493Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3494CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3495UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3496
17e78a56 3497* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3498
3499x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3500Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3501Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3502 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3503TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3504WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3505Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3506PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3507PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3508PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3509SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3510Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3511ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3512Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3513
17e78a56
AC
3514stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3515kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3516
7fcca85b
AC
3517Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3518been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3519configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3520permanently REMOVED.
3521
a196c81c 3522* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3523
3524Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3525Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3526Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3527ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3528Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3529ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3530
6d6b80e5 3531* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3532
6d6b80e5 3533GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3534sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3535present.
3536
bf64bfd6
AC
3537* Other news:
3538
e23194cb
EZ
3539* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3540
3541* The MI enabled by default.
3542
3543The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3544revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3545engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3546using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3547which is now deprecated.
3548
3549* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3550
3551GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3552main features are supported:
3553
3554 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3555
3556 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3557 extension;
3558
3559 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3560
3561 - a Pascal expression parser.
3562
3563However, some important features are not yet supported.
3564
3565 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3566
3567 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3568
3569 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3570 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3571
3572 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3573
3574 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3575
3576* Changes in completion.
3577
3578Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3579to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3580users expect at the shell prompt.
3581
3582Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3583`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3584program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3585files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3586be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3587considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3588name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3589
3590`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3591
3592* New platform-independent commands:
3593
3594It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3595hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3596documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3597
3598* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3599
d7275149
MK
3600Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3601revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3602many threads as your system allows you to have.
3603
e23194cb
EZ
3604Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3605
d7275149
MK
3606Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3607multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3608
3609* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3610
3611Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3612
e23194cb
EZ
3613GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3614debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3615supported.)
3616
3617* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3618
3619Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3620breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3621implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3622put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3623and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3624registers.
3625
3626The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3627debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3628watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3629
3630* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3631
3632New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3633the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3634
3635New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3636display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3637IDT.
3638
3639New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3640from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3641New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3642a given linear address.
3643
3644GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3645program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3646which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3647
3648DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3649
6c56c069
EZ
3650It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3651
e23194cb
EZ
3652* Changes in documentation.
3653
3654All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3655Documentation License.
3656
3657Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3658manual.
3659
3660TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3661
3662Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3663manual.
3664
3665The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3666documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3667hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3668
5d6640b1
AC
3669* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3670
3671The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3672``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3673contents of this file.
3674
1a1d8446
AC
3675* gdba.el deleted
3676
3677GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3678
9debab2f 3679*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3680
c63ce875
EZ
3681* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3682
3683Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3684programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3685displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3686greater level of detail.
3687
3688* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3689
3690It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3691bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3692on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3693written.
3694
3695* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3696
3697The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3698necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3699machines ``out of the box''.
3700
3701The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3702possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3703signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3704would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3705interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3706
3707It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3708standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3709even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3710and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3711terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3712
3713The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3714enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3715also works.
3716
3717DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3718GDB.
3719
3720It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3721directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3722times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3723breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3724
ed9a39eb
JM
3725* New native configurations
3726
3727ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3728PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3729
7a292a7a
SS
3730* New targets
3731
96baa820 3732Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3733x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3734PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3735TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3736
085dd6e6
JM
3737* OBSOLETE configurations
3738
3739Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3740Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3741Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3742ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3743Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3744
9debab2f
AC
3745Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3746but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3747these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3748be permanently REMOVED.
3749
5330533d
SS
3750* Gould support removed
3751
3752Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3753
bc9e5bbf
AC
3754* New features for SVR4
3755
3756On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3757without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3758load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3759
3760* Many C++ enhancements
3761
3762C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3763in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3764
adf40b2e
JM
3765* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3766
3767A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3768sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3769with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3770``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3771
3772 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3773 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3774
43e526b9
JM
3775* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3776
3777A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3778expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3779instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3780
3781The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3782added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3783
96baa820
JM
3784* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3785
3786The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3787``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3788include ``set remote P-packet''.
3789
11cf8741
JM
3790* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3791
3792The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3793accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3794``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3795
7876dd43
DB
3796* ``apropos'' command added.
3797
3798The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3799documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3800try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3801
bc9e5bbf
AC
3802* New MI interface
3803
3804A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3805interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3806process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3807"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3808enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3809
3810 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3811
c906108c
SS
3812*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3813
3814* New native configurations
3815
3816HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3817HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3818M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3819
3820* New targets
3821
3822Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3823Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3824Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3825
3826* OBSOLETE configurations
3827
3828Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3829
3830Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3831but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3832these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3833be permanently REMOVED.
3834
3835* ANSI/ISO C
3836
3837As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3838buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3839containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3840use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3841available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3842configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3843information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3844already.
3845
3846* Readline 2.2
3847
3848GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3849
3850* set extension-language
3851
3852You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3853languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3854you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3855 set extension-language .c c++
3856The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3857and their associated languages.
3858
3859* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3860
3861When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3862you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3863PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3864
3865 set processor NAME
3866
3867sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3868following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3869
3870 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3871 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3872 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3873 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3874 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3875 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3876 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3877 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3878 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3879 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3880 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3881
3882At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3883special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3884registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3885only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3886
3887* HP-UX support
3888
3889Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3890more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3891library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3892support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3893for xdb and dbx commands.
3894
3895* Catchpoints
3896
3897HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3898generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3899to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3900
3901This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3902argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3903output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3904
3905* Debugging across forks
3906
3907On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3908in the inferior.
3909
3910* TUI
3911
3912HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3913it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3914configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3915
3916* GDB remote protocol additions
3917
3918A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3919Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3920fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3921allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3922
3923For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3924full 64-bit address. The command
3925
3926 set remoteaddresssize 32
3927
3928can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3929the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3930will be discarded.
3931
3932In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3933command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3934
3935 maint packet heythere
3936
3937sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3938disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3939time.
3940
3941The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3942target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3943downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3944
3945* Tracing can collect general expressions
3946
3947You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3948further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3949doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3950
3951* mask-address variable for Mips
3952
3953For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3954a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3955of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3956
3957* Higher serial baud rates
3958
3959GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3960230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3961to achieve all of these rates.)
3962
3963* i960 simulator
3964
3965The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3966builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3967
3968
3969*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3970
3971* New native configurations
3972
3973Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3974Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3975Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3976PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3977PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3978Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3979Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3980
3981* New targets
3982
3983Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3984Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3985Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3986Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3987MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3988MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3989MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3990Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3991Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3992Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3993NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3994
3995* New debugging protocols
3996
3997ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3998M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3999DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4000PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4001PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4002Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4003
4004* DWARF 2
4005
4006All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4007format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4008information.
4009
4010* Java frontend
4011
4012GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4013only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4014
4015* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4016
4017For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4018loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4019locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4020
4021* Live range splitting
4022
4023GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4024range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4025more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4026
4027* Hurd support
4028
4029GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4030updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4031
4032* ARM Thumb support
4033
4034GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4035instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4036instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4037accordingly.
4038
4039* MIPS16 support
4040
4041GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4042instruction set.
4043
4044* Overlay support
4045
4046GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4047linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4048will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4049control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4050additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4051in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4052
4053* info symbol
4054
4055The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4056the symbol at the specified address.
4057
4058* Trace support
4059
4060The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4061asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4062extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4063includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4064file tracepoint.c for more details.
4065
4066* MIPS simulator
4067
4068Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4069by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4070of most MIPS variants.
4071
4072* Sparc simulator
4073
4074Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4075by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4076Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4077
4078* set architecture
4079
4080For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4081basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4082architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4083the possible architectures.
4084
4085*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4086
4087* New native configurations
4088
4089Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4090M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4091PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4092PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4093PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4094RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4095
4096* New targets
4097
4098ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4099I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4100MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4101MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4102PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4103Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4104Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4105
4106* PowerPC simulator
4107
4108The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4109contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4110PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4111basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4112performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4113
4114* Solaris 2.5
4115
4116GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4117
4118* Windows 95/NT native
4119
4120GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4121To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4122which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4123Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4124ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4125
4126* dont-repeat command
4127
4128If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4129command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4130useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4131extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4132
4133* Send break instead of ^C
4134
4135The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4136rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4137GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4138
4139* Remote protocol timeout
4140
4141The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4142that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4143to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4144
4145* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4146
4147By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4148loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4149stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4150when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4151in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4152
4153Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4154/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4155automatically on hpux10.
4156
4157* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4158
4159Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4160
4161* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4162
4163When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4164may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4165the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4166every character. The default value is 1050.
4167
4168* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4169
4170If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4171a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4172replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4173details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4174remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4175to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4176
4177* Speedups for remote debugging
4178
4179GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4180the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4181and more efficient S-record downloading.
4182
4183* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4184
4185GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4186Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4187
4188*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4189
4190* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4191
4192The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4193can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4194
4195* Remote targets use caching
4196
4197Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4198remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4199it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4200debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4201off' turns the the data cache off.
4202
4203* Remote targets may have threads
4204
4205The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4206in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4207gdb/remote.c for details.
4208
4209* NetROM support
4210
4211If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4212support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4213acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4214write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4215support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4216another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4217sequence is something like
4218
4219 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4220 load <prog>
4221 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4222
4223* Macintosh host
4224
4225GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4226may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4227it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4228available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4229device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4230directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4231scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4232mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4233
4234* Autoconf
4235
4236GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4237but does simplify configuration and building.
4238
4239* hpux10
4240
4241GDB now supports hpux10.
4242
4243*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4244
4245* New native configurations
4246
4247x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4248x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4249NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4250Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4251
4252* New targets
4253
4254A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4255HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4256CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4257PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4258WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4259
4260* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4261
4262GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4263possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4264filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4265the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4266if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4267
4268* Arguments to user-defined commands
4269
4270User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4271Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4272trivial example:
4273define adder
4274 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4275
4276To execute the command use:
4277adder 1 2 3
4278
4279Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4280Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4281use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4282
4283* New `if' and `while' commands
4284
4285This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4286commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4287expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4288execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4289terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4290`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4291if the expression is zero.
4292
4293* Fortran source language mode
4294
4295GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4296Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4297variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4298with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4299Fortran compilers.
4300
4301* Better HPUX support
4302
4303Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4304running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4305processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4306for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4307that behavior do the following before running the program:
4308
4309 adb -w a.out
4310 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4311 control-d
4312
4313This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4314To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4315
4316 adb -w a.out
4317 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4318 control-d
4319
4320You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4321the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4322external linkage.
4323
4324GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4325HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4326
4327* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4328
4329You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4330commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4331current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4332"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4333associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4334configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4335
4336* New DOS host serial code
4337
4338This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4339no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4340a PC's serial port.
4341
4342*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4343
4344* New "complete" command
4345
4346This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4347were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4348
4349* Trailing space optional in prompt
4350
4351"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4352allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4353
4354* Breakpoint hit counts
4355
4356"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4357has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4358can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4359to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4360less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4361that breakpoint.
4362
4363* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4364
4365"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4366an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4367arrays actually contain only short strings.
4368
4369* Shared library breakpoints
4370
4371In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4372breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4373
4374* Hardware watchpoints
4375
4376There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4377targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4378
55241689 4379Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4380
4381* Annotations
4382
4383Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4384and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4385
4386* Improved Irix 5 support
4387
4388GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4389
4390* Improved HPPA support
4391
4392GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4393
4394* New native configurations
4395
4396Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4397HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4398Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4399RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4400
4401* New targets
4402
4403OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4404MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4405Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4406
4407* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4408
4409There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4410This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4411
4412* Fixes
4413
4414As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4415and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4416
4417*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4418
4419* Irix 5 is now supported
4420
4421* HPPA support
4422
4423GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4424to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4425GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4426of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4427can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4428
4429
4430*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4431
4432* User visible changes:
4433
4434* Remote Debugging
4435
4436The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4437target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4438debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4439integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4440debugging info for the mips target).
4441
4442* DEC Alpha native support
4443
4444GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4445debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4446work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4447Alpha-specific notes.
4448
4449* Preliminary thread implementation
4450
4451GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4452
4453* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4454
4455This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4456to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4457for details).
4458
4459* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4460
4461This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4462mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4463call methods, ...etc.
4464
4465*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4466
4467 * User visible changes:
4468
4469Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4470supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4471other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4472somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4473
4474Filename completion now works.
4475
4476When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4477arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4478addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4479
4480All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4481vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4482should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4483your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4484to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4485
4486 * DEC alpha support
4487
4488This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4489cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4490
4491
4492*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4493
4494 * Testsuite
4495
4496This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4497The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4498via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4499
4500 * C++ demangling
4501
4502'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4503emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4504Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4505disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4506use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4507
4508 * Simulators
4509
4510GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4511So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4512Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4513
4514 * New targets supported
4515
4516H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4517H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4518SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4519Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4520IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4521
4522Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4523version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4524GO32 memory extender.
4525
4526 * New remote protocols
4527
4528MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4529
4530 * New source languages supported
4531
4532This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4533used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4534into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4535
4536
4537*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4538
4539 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4540
4541GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4542version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4543University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4544compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4545format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4546(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4547
4548Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4549
4550 * Faster and better demangling
4551
4552We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4553demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4554character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4555only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4556This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4557increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4558symbol lookups.
4559
4560`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4561from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4562compiler does not actually implement.
4563
4564 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4565
4566In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4567inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4568recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4569very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4570The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4571circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4572fix.
4573
4574The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4575release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4576
4577 * Improved configure script
4578
4579The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4580you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4581host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4582done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4583
4584We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4585version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4586`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4587The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4588only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4589We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4590
4591 * Documentation improvements
4592
4593There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4594produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4595before submitting changes.
4596
4597The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4598M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4599`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4600you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4601a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4602
4603*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4604We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4605been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4606or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4607`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4608around this problem.
4609
4610 * New features
4611
4612GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4613the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4614`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4615the target program.
4616
4617The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4618how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4619
4620 * New native hosts supported
4621
4622HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4623386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4624
4625 * New targets supported
4626
4627AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4628
4629 * New file formats supported
4630
4631BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4632HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4633
4634 * Major bug fixes
4635
4636Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4637
4638We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4639printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4640
4641We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4642for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4643release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4644
4645You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4646will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4647
4648We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4649for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4650especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4651libraries.
4652
4653The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4654information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4655command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4656any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4657when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4658
4659 * Internal improvements
4660
4661GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4662debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4663
4664GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4665Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4666symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4667contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4668shared code that handles any of them.
4669
4670 * New command line options
4671
4672We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4673
4674 * Mmalloc licensing
4675
4676The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4677General Public License.
4678
4679*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4680
4681 * Host/native/target split
4682
4683GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4684hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4685target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4686local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4687ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4688
4689The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4690GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4691is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4692code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4693any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4694built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4695handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4696
4697GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4698It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4699plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4700
4701 * New hosts supported
4702
4703HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4704386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4705386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4706
4707 * New targets supported
4708
4709Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
471068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4711
4712 * New native hosts supported
4713
4714386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4715 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4716386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4717
4718 * New file formats supported
4719
4720BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4721supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4722format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4723
4724 * New commands
4725
4726`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4727`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4728These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4729
4730`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4731
4732You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4733scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4734prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4735executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4736
4737 * C++ improvements
4738
4739We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4740info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4741symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4742
4743Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4744
4745 * Major bug fixes
4746
4747The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4748fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4749by the compiler.
4750
4751We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4752support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4753
4754John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4755slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4756that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4757purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4758the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4759mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4760
4761Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4762about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4763completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4764we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4765
4766 * AMD 29k support
4767
4768A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4769specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4770calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4771usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4772in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4773
4774We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4775Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4776of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4777resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4778
4779 * Remote interfaces
4780
4781We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4782with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4783message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4784This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4785needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4786breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4787each instruction being stepped through.
4788
4789The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4790registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4791
4792There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4793find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4794Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4795processor with a serial port.
4796
4797 * Configuration
4798
4799Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4800`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4801supported, and what files each one uses.
4802
4803 * Library changes
4804
4805There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4806disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4807Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4808disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4809
4810The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4811Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4812can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4813grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4814
4815 * Documentation
4816
4817The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4818reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4819as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4820encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4821system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4822bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4823
4824And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4825
4826
4827*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4828
4829 * Better support for C++ function names
4830
4831GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4832names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4833(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4834single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4835Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4836
4837GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4838the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4839You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4840lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4841for the list of formats.
4842
4843 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4844
4845Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4846C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4847directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4848can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4849usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4850about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4851this problem.)
4852
4853 * New 'maintenance' command
4854
4855All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4856the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4857can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4858
4859 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4860 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4861 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4862 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4863 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4864 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4865
4866The following commands are new:
4867
4868 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4869 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4870 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4871
4872 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4873
4874We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4875(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4876be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4877read after argv processing.
4878
4879 * New hosts supported
4880
4881Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4882
55241689 4883GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4884
4885We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4886is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4887for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4888masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4889fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4890It costs extra.
4891
4892 * New targets supported
4893
4894Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4895
4896 * More smarts about finding #include files
4897
4898GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4899all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4900greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4901especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4902the one that contains your sources.
4903
4904We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4905breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4906try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4907
4908 * Interesting infernals change
4909
4910GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4911section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4912target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4913stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4914
4915 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4916
4917There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4918 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4919 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4920
4921See the ChangeLog for details.
4922
4923*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4924
4925 * New machines supported (host and target)
4926
4927IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4928
4929SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4930
4931 * New malloc package
4932
4933GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4934Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4935capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4936This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4937pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4938more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4939
4940 * info proc
4941
4942The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4943'help info proc' for details.
4944
4945 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4946
4947The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4948Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4949possible.
4950
4951 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4952
4953Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4954support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4955conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4956environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4957that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4958in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4959
4960 * Cross byte order fixes
4961
4962Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4963targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4964
4965 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4966
4967If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4968system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4969`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4970program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4971called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4972Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4973and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4974the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4975option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4976starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4977
4978You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4979the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4980information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4981slower, but makes future operations faster.
4982
4983The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4984build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4985A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4986use is:
4987
4988 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4989
4990The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4991It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4992shared across multiple host platforms.
4993
4994 * longjmp() handling
4995
4996GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4997siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4998all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4999platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5000
5001 * Solaris 2.0
5002
5003Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5004this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5005reading symbols.
5006
5007 * Bug fixes
5008
5009As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5010People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5011crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5012
5013*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5014
5015 * New machines supported (host and target)
5016
5017SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5018 (except core files)
5019BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5020Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5021
5022 * New machines supported (target)
5023
5024AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5025
5026 * C++ support
5027
5028GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5029The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5030per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5031
5032GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5033`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5034extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5035good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5036will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5037released.
5038
5039 * New features for SVR4
5040
5041GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5042shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5043only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5044
5045The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5046on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5047it prints the address mappings of the process.
5048
5049If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5050bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5051
5052 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5053
5054Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5055now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5056skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5057make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5058same code linked statically.
5059
5060 * New Getopt
5061
5062GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5063version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5064continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5065Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5066added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5067future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5068
5069 * Bugs fixed
5070
5071The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5072Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5073See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5074
5075
5076*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5077
5078 * New machines supported (host and target)
5079
5080Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5081NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5082Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5083
5084 * Almost SCO Unix support
5085
5086We had hoped to support:
5087SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5088(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5089that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5090about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5091
5092 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5093
5094GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5095debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5096is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5097send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5098reqired (if any).
5099
5100 * New Readline
5101
5102GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5103is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5104required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5105
5106 * Bugs fixed
5107
5108The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5109Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5110See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5111
5112 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5113
5114GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5115supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5116symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5117
5118Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5119mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5120debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5121mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5122version 2.
5123
5124Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5125really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5126line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5127variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5128situation somewhat.
5129
5130When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5131However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5132methods.
5133
5134We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5135DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5136encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5137
5138
5139*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5140
5141 * Improved configuration
5142
5143Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5144Porting BFD is simpler.
5145
5146 * Stepping improved
5147
5148The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5149of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5150in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5151function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5152
5153 * Bug fixing
5154
5155Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5156
5157 * New host supported (not target)
5158
5159Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5160
5161
5162*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5163
5164 * Multiple source language support
5165
5166GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5167It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5168and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5169language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5170You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5171`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5172
5173 * GDB and Modula-2
5174
5175GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5176currently under development at the State University of New York at
5177Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5178continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5179
5180Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5181debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5182symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5183
5184There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5185in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5186
5187 * set write on/off
5188
5189GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5190a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5191the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5192by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5193effect immediately.
5194
5195 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5196
5197When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5198shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5199The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5200examining core files.
5201
5202 * set listsize
5203
5204You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5205The default is 10.
5206
5207 * New machines supported (host and target)
5208
5209SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5210Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5211Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5212
5213 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5214
5215IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5216
5217 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5218
5219AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5220AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5221Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5222
5223 * New remote interfaces
5224
5225AMD 29000 Adapt
5226AMD 29000 Minimon
5227
5228
5229*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5230
5231 * New Facilities
5232
5233Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5234
5235Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5236target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5237is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5238remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5239remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5240also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5241using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5242stub on the target system.
5243
5244New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5245
5246GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5247library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5248object file types such as a.out and coff.
5249
5250There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5251refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5252
5253
5254 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5255
5256All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5257by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5258
5259For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5260``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5261Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5262
5263What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5264print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5265will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5266all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5267
5268confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5269 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5270 it is already running. Default is ON.
5271
5272editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5273 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5274 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5275 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5276 Default is ON.
5277
5278history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5279 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5280 or the value of the environment variable
5281 GDBHISTFILE.
5282
5283history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5284 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5285 HISTSIZE.
5286
5287history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5288 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5289 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5290
5291history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5292 history expansion will be performed on
5293 command line input. The default is OFF.
5294
5295radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5296 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5297 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5298
5299height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5300 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5301 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5302 variable TERM.
5303
5304width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5305 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5306 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5307 variable TERM.
5308
5309Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5310``set width'' instead.
5311
5312print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5313 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5314 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5315 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5316
5317print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5318 is OFF.
5319
5320print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5321 "raw" form if off.
5322
5323print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5324 like instructions.
5325
5326print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5327
5328
5329 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5330
5331The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5332new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5333are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5334window.
5335
5336
5337 * Support for Shared Libraries
5338
5339GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5340Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5341before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5342happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5343At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5344from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5345shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5346It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5347
5348sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5349 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5350 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5351
5352info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5353
5354
5355 * Watchpoints
5356
5357A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5358expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5359tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5360quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5361problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5362more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5363
5364watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5365
5366info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5367
5368delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5369disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5370enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5371
5372
5373 * C++ multiple inheritance
5374
5375When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5376for C++ programs.
5377
5378 * C++ exception handling
5379
5380Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5381ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5382the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5383handler's context).
5384
5385catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5386 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5387 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5388
5389info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5390 current stack frame.
5391
5392
5393 * Minor command changes
5394
5395The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5396command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5397is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5398
5399The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5400at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5401frames without printing.
5402
5403 * New directory command
5404
5405'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5406The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5407about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5408with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5409find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5410
5411 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5412
5413For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5414for more details.
5415
5416GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5417two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5418Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5419where the program that you are debugging will run.