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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
31916278 4*** Changes since GDB 7.3.1
d6e00af6 5
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6* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
7 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
8
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9* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
10 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
11 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
12 target hardware watchpoint.
13
14 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
15 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
16 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
17 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
18
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19* Python scripting
20
32d1c362 21 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 22 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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23 existing one.
24
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25 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
26 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
27 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
28 "off".
29
baacfb07 30 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 31 Python API.
713389e0 32
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33 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
34 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 35 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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36 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
37 corresponding value.
38
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39 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
40 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
41 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
42 on GDB start-up.
43
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44 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
45 static_block will return the global and static blocks
46 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
47 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
48
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49 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
50
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51 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
52 "gdb.breakpoints".
53
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54 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
55 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
56 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
57 "some_type.items()".
58
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59 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
60 new object file.
61
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62 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
63 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
64 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
65 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
66 any anonymous fields.
67
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68* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
69 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
70 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
71 lives.
72
73 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
74 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
75 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
76 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
77 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
78
79 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
80 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
81
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82* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
83 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
84 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
85 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
86 use this option to specify where to find it.
87
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88* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
89 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
90 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
91 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
92 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
93 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
94 section in the user manual for more details.
95
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96* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
97 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
98 become available after that.
99
71eba9c2 100* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 101
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102* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
103 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
104 gcc version 4.7.
105
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106* New commands
107
108!SHELL COMMAND
109 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
110 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
111
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112* Changed commands
113
114watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
115 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
116 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
117
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118info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
119 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
120 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
121
71eba9c2 122info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
123 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
124 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
125 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
126 name starts with a hyphen.
127
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128collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
129 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
130 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
131 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
132 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
133 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
134 number of bytes that will be collected.
135
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136tstart [NOTES]
137 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
138 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
139 setting the variable trace-notes.
140
141tstop [NOTES]
142 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
143 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
144 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
145 trace-stop-notes.
146
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147* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
148 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
149 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
150 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
151 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
152 is running.
153
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154* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
155 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
156 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
157
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158* New options
159
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160set extended-prompt
161show extended-prompt
162 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
163 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
164 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
165 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
166 prompt is displayed.
167
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168set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
169show print entry-values
170 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
171 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
172 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
173
174set debug entry-values
175show debug entry-values
176 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
177 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
178
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179set basenames-may-differ
180show basenames-may-differ
181 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
182 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
183 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
184 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
185 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
186 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
187 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
188 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
189
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190set trace-user
191show trace-user
192set trace-notes
193show trace-notes
194 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
195 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
196 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
197 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
198
199set trace-stop-notes
200show trace-stop-notes
201 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
202 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
203 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
204 started by someone else.
205
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206* New remote packets
207
208QTEnable
209
210 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
211
212QTDisable
213
214 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
215
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216QTNotes
217
218 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
219
220qTP
221
222 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
223
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224qTMinFTPILen
225
226 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
227 be placed.
228
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229* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
230 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
231
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232* New targets
233
234Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
235
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236* New Simulators
237
238Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
239
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240*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
241
242* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
243
d6e00af6 244*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 245
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246* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
247 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
248 matches the given regular expression.
249
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250* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
251
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252* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
253 dumping the instruction opcodes.
254
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255* New command line options
256
257-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
258 This is mostly for testing purposes.
259
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260* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
261 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
262
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263* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
264 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
265 source path list instead of augmenting it.
266
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267* GDB now understands thread names.
268
269 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
270 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
271
272 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
273 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
274
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275* OpenCL C
276 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
277 has been integrated into GDB.
278
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279* Python scripting
280
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281 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
282 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
283 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
284
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285 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
286 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
287 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
288 and allows for more dynamic content.
289
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290 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
291 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
292 have an is_valid method.
293
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294 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
295 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
296 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
297
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298 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
299
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300 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
301 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
302 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
303 that function like so:
304
305 result = some_value (10,20)
306
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307 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
308 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
309 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
310
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311 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
312 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
313 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
314 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
315 New function: register_pretty_printer.
316
317 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
318 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
319
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320 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
321
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322 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
323 selected thread.
324
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325 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
326 holds the thread's name.
327
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328 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
329 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 330 occurring in the process being debugged.
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331 The following events are currently supported:
332 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
333 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
334 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
335
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336* C++ Improvements:
337
338 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
339 instantiation. For example, if you have:
340
341 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
342
343 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
344 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
345 was added to GCC 4.5.
346
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347 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
348 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
349 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
350 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
351 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
352 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
353
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354* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
355 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
356 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
357 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
358 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
359
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360* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
361 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
362 execution to a label.
363
364* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
365 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
366 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
367 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
368
b56df873 369* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 370 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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371 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
372 of scope.
373
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374* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
375
376 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
377 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
378 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
379 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
380 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
381 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
382
383 (gdb) info threads
384 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
385
386 While now you see this:
387
388 (gdb) info threads
389 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
390
391 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
392 dumps.
393
394 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
395 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
396 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
397 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
398
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399* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
400 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
401 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
402 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
403 section in the user manual for more details.
404
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405* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
406
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407 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
408 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 409
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410 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
411
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412* New native configurations
413
414ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
415
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416* New targets:
417
418Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
419
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420* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
421 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
422 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
423 in the GDB user manual.
424
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425* Guile support was removed.
426
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427* New features in the GNU simulator
428
429 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
430
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431 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
432
76b8507d 433*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 434
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435* Shared library support for remote targets by default
436
437 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
438 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
439 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
440 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
441 was always disabled for such configurations.
442
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443* C++ Improvements:
444
445 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
446
447 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
448 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
449 For example:
450 namespace A
451 {
452 class B { };
453 void foo (B) { }
454 }
455 ...
456 A::B b
457 foo(b)
458 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
459 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
460 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
461
462 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
463
464 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
465 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
466 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
467 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
468 entry.
469 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
470 mentioned flavors of operators.
471
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472 ** static const class members
473
474 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
475 class definition has been fixed.
476
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477* Windows Thread Information Block access.
478
479 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
480 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
481 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
482 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
483 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
484 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
485
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486* Static tracepoints
487
488 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
489 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
490 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
491 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
492 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
493 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
494 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
495 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
496 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
497 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
498 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
499 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
500 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
501 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
502 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
503 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
504 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
505 the "New remote packets" section below.
506
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507* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
508
509 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
510 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
511 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
512 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
513
514* Observer mode
515
516 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
517 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
518 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
519 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
520 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
521 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
522 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
523
524* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
525 current thread.
526
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527* New remote packets
528
529qGetTIBAddr
530
531 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
532
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533qRelocInsn
534
535 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
536 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
537 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
538 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
539 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
540 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
541
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542qTfSTM, qTsSTM
543
544 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
545
546qTSTMat
547
548 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
549 program.
550
551qXfer:statictrace:read
552
553 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
554 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
555 to gdb's qSupported query.
556
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557QAllow
558
559 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
560
561QTDPsrc
562
563 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
564 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
565
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566* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
567 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
568 a directory.
569
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570* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
571
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572 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
573 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
574 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
575 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
576
577 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
578 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
579 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
580 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
581 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
582 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
583 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
584
585 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
586 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 587
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588 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
589
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590* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
591 it understands register description.
592
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593* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
594
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595* X86 general purpose registers
596
597 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
598 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
599 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
600 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
601 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
602
95a42b64 603* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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604 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
605 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
606 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
607 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
608 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 609
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610* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
611 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
612 in the specified file.
613
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614* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
615 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
616 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
617 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
618 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
619 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
620 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
621 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
622 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
623 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
624
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PA
625* New commands
626
f1421989
HZ
627eval template, expressions...
628 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
629 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
630
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PA
631set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
632show target-file-system-kind
633 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
634 names.
635
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PA
636save breakpoints <filename>
637 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
638 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
639 definitions, use the `source' command.
640
641`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
642is now deprecated.
643
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PA
644info static-tracepoint-markers
645 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
646
647strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
648 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
649 function, line, address, or marker ID.
650
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SS
651set observer on|off
652show observer
653 Enable and disable observer mode.
654
655set may-write-registers on|off
656set may-write-memory on|off
657set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
658set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
659set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
660set may-interrupt on|off
661 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
662 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
663 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
664 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
665 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
666 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
667 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
668
669set record memory-query on|off
670show record memory-query
671 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
672 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
673
53a71c06
CR
674* Changed commands
675
676disassemble
677 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
678
f3e9a817
PM
679* Python scripting
680
9279c692
JB
681** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
682 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
683 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
684 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
685 GDB using Python' in the manual.
686
adc36818 687** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
688 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
689 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
690 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 691
fa33c3cd 692** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
693 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
694
695** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
696
697** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 698
967cf477
DE
699** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
700
8a1ea21f
DE
701** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
702 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
703 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
704
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VP
705* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
706there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
707tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
708regular breakpoints.
709
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710* New targets
711
712ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
713
6aecb9c2
JB
714* D language support.
715 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
716 language.
717
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TJB
718* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
719 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
720 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
721 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
722 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
723
724* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
725 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
726 conditions of the form:
727
728 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
729
730 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
731 interface mentioned above.
732
bfbf3774 733*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 734
4eef138c
TT
735* C++ Improvements
736
737 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
738
739 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
740 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
741 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
742 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
743 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
744
4eef138c
TT
745 ** Bug Fixes
746
747 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
748 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
749 qualified name.
750
751 ** Cast Operators
752
753 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
754 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
755
2d1c1221
ME
756* New targets
757
758Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 759Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
760
761* New Simulators
762
763Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 764Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 765
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PA
766* Multi-program debugging.
767
768 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
769 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
770 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
771 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
772 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
773 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
774 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
775 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
776
d5551862
SS
777* New tracing features
778
779 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
780
781 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
782
783 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
784 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
785 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
786 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
787 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
788 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
789 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
790 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
791 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
792 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 793
d5551862 794 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
795
796 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
797 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
798 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
799 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
800 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
801 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
802 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
803 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
804 the regular trace command.
805
d5551862
SS
806 ** Disconnected tracing
807
808 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
809 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
810 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
811 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
812 connection is lost unexpectedly.
813
00bf0b85
SS
814 ** Trace files
815
816 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
817 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
818 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
819 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
820 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
821 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
822 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
823
824 ** Circular trace buffer
825
826 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
827 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
828 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
829 not be available for all target agents.
830
21a0512e
PP
831* Changed commands
832
833disassemble
834 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
835 the arguments to be comma-separated.
836
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DJ
837info variables
838 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
839 which only declare a variable are not shown.
840
fb2e7cb4
JB
841source
842 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
843 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
844 support.
845
846 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
847 "set script-extension" (see below).
848
6c95b8df
PA
849* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
850
399cd161
MS
851record save [<FILENAME>]
852 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
853 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
854
855record restore <FILENAME>
856 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
857 earlier time, for replay debugging.
858
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PA
859add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
860 Add a new inferior.
861
862clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
863 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
864 inferior has loaded.
865
866remove-inferior ID
867 Remove an inferior.
868
869maint info program-spaces
870 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
871
9a7071a8
JB
872set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
873show remote interrupt-sequence
874 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
875 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
876 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
877 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
878 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
879
880set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
881show remote interrupt-on-connect
882 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
883 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
884 Linux kernel.
885
886set remotebreak [on | off]
887show remotebreak
888Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
889
f61e138d
SS
890tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
891 Create or modify a trace state variable.
892
893info tvariables
894 List trace state variables and their values.
895
896delete tvariable $NAME ...
897 Delete one or more trace state variables.
898
6da95a67
SS
899teval EXPR, ...
900 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
901 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
902
7a697b8d
SS
903ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
904 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
905
b0f02ee9
JK
906* New expression syntax
907
908 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
909 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
910
6c95b8df
PA
911* New options
912
913set follow-exec-mode new|same
914show follow-exec-mode
915 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
916 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
917 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
918
236f1d4d
SS
919set default-collect EXPR, ...
920show default-collect
921 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
922 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
923 such as registers or a critical global variable.
924
d5551862
SS
925set disconnected-tracing
926show disconnected-tracing
927 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
928 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
929 upon disconnection.
930
4daf5ac0
SS
931set circular-trace-buffer
932show circular-trace-buffer
933 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
934 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
935 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
936 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
937
fb2e7cb4
JB
938set script-extension off|soft|strict
939show script-extension
940 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
941 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
942 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
943 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
944 evaluation failed.
945 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
946
2b71fc8e
JB
947set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
948show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
949 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
950 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
951 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
952 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
953 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
954 is on.
955
de2e5182
TT
956* Python API Improvements
957
958 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
959 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
960 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
961
962 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
963 `is_base_class' attribute.
964
965 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
966
967 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
968 evaluate an expression.
969
f61e138d
SS
970* New remote packets
971
972QTDV
973 Define a trace state variable.
974
975qTV
976 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
977
d5551862
SS
978QTDisconnected
979 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
980
4daf5ac0
SS
981QTBuffer:circular
982 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
983
d5551862
SS
984qTfP, qTsP
985 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
986
2d483d34
MS
987* Bug fixes
988
989Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
990
6e0e5977
JB
991Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
992much more reliable. In particular:
993 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
994 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
995 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
996 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
997 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
998 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
999 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1000 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1001 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1002 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1003 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1004 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1005 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1006 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1007 non-threaded programs.
1008
93c26624
JK
1009PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1010This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1011libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1012executable program.
1013
abc7453d 1014*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1015
4efc6507
DE
1016* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1017dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1018them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1019for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1020"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1021
782b2b07
SS
1022* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1023breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1024or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1025the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1026for tracepoint actions.
1027
53a71c06
CR
1028* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1029raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1030modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1031
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1032* Process record and replay
1033
1034 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1035 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1036 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1037 execute commands.
1038
64644d9b
MS
1039* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1040step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1041set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1042reverse execution.
1043
b9412953
DD
1044* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1045feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
10462.6.28 or later.
1047
6c7a06a3
TT
1048* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1049target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1050char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1051literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1052U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1053`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1054system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1055the installation instructions for more information.
1056
f1838a98
UW
1057* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1058remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1059with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1060the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1061
55333a84
DE
1062* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1063and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1064
7f6a6314
PM
1065* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1066now complete on file names.
1067
65d12d83
TT
1068* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1069completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1070For instance, consider:
1071
1072 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1073 # struct example variable;
1074 (gdb) p variable.
1075
1076If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1077completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1078
edb3359d
DJ
1079* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1080the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1081
2fae03e8
TT
1082* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1083operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1084macros.
1085
47a3467a 1086* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1087the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1088implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1089
1090* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1091registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1092can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1093and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1094
08388c79
DE
1095* New remote packets
1096
1097qSearch:memory:
1098 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1099
a6f3e723
SL
1100QStartNoAckMode
1101 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1102 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1103 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1104
d7713ae0
EZ
1105vKill
1106 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1107 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1108
07e059b5
VP
1109qXfer:osdata:read
1110 Obtains additional operating system information
1111
47a3467a
PA
1112qXfer:siginfo:read
1113qXfer:siginfo:write
1114 Read or write additional signal information.
1115
060871df
PA
1116* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1117
1118 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1119 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1120 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1121
c055b101 1122* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1123DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1124
1125* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1126and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1127`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1128
31fffb02
CS
1129* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1130with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1131
88d8a8e0
JB
1132* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1133
7f99b190
JB
1134* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1135
ccd213ac
DJ
1136* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1137which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1138
1fddbabb 1139* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1140list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1141
a0ef4274
DJ
1142* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1143conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1144have also been fixed.
1145
bfb8797a 1146* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1147From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1148are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1149
71c25dea
TT
1150* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1151example, given:
1152
1153 template<typename T> class C { };
1154 C<char const *> c;
1155
1156GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1157
1158 ptype C<char const *>
1159 ptype C<char const*>
1160 ptype C<const char *>
1161 ptype C<const char*>
1162
ccd213ac
DJ
1163* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1164
1165 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1166 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1167
7ae0e2a2
UW
1168 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1169 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1170 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1171
a6f3e723
SL
1172 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1173 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1174
da8bd9a3
DJ
1175 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1176 gdbserver.
1177
d70e31dd
DE
1178 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1179 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1180
1181 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1182 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1183 as appropriate.
1184
d57a3c85
TJB
1185* Python scripting
1186
1187 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1188 available is determined at configure time.
1189
d8906c6f
TJB
1190 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1191
aadc346a
JB
1192* Ada tasking support
1193
1194 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1195 been introduced:
1196
1197 info tasks
1198 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1199 info task N
1200 Print detailed information about task number N.
1201 task
1202 Print the task number of the current task.
1203 task N
1204 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1205
adb483fe
DJ
1206* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1207add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1208
2277426b
PA
1209* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1210
1211 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1212 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1213 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1214 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1215 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1216 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1217 below.
1218
08d16641
PA
1219* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1220"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1221information.
1222
e35359c5
UW
1223* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1224to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1225architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1226See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1227more information.
1228
85e747d2
UW
1229* Multi-architecture debugging.
1230
1231 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1232 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1233 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1234 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1235 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1236
1237* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1238use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1239Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1240powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1241--enable-targets configure option.
1242
11ade57a
PA
1243* Non-stop mode debugging.
1244
1245 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1246 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1247 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1248 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1249 section in the user manual for more information.
1250
1251 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1252 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1253 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1254 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1255 extensions on linux targets.
1256
d7713ae0 1257* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1258
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1259catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1260 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1261 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1262 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1263 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1264 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1265 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1266 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1267 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1268
08388c79
DE
1269find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1270 val1 [, val2, ...]
1271 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1272
d57a3c85
TJB
1273maint set python print-stack
1274maint show python print-stack
1275 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1276
1277python [CODE]
1278 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1279
d7713ae0
EZ
1280macro define
1281macro list
1282macro undef
1283 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1284 interactively.
1285
1286info os processes
1287 Show operating system information about processes.
1288
2277426b
PA
1289info inferiors
1290 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1291
1292inferior NUM
1293 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1294
1295detach inferior NUM
1296 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1297
1298kill inferior NUM
1299 Kill inferior number NUM.
1300
d7713ae0
EZ
1301* New options
1302
3285f3fe
UW
1303set spu stop-on-load
1304show spu stop-on-load
1305 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1306
ff1a52c6
UW
1307set spu auto-flush-cache
1308show spu auto-flush-cache
1309 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1310 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1311
d7713ae0
EZ
1312set sh calling-convention
1313show sh calling-convention
1314 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1315
e0a3ce09 1316set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1317show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1318 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1319
1320set disassemble-next-line
1321show disassemble-next-line
1322 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1323 the debuggee stops.
1324
1325set remote noack-packet
1326show remote noack-packet
1327 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1328 under "New remote packets."
1329
1330set remote query-attached-packet
1331show remote query-attached-packet
1332 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1333
1334set remote read-siginfo-object
1335show remote read-siginfo-object
1336 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1337 packet.
1338
1339set remote write-siginfo-object
1340show remote write-siginfo-object
1341 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1342 packet.
1343
40ab02ce
MS
1344set remote reverse-continue
1345show remote reverse-continue
1346 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1347
1348set remote reverse-step
1349show remote reverse-step
1350 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1351
d7713ae0
EZ
1352set displaced-stepping
1353show displaced-stepping
1354 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1355 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1356 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1357
1358set debug displaced
1359show debug displaced
1360 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1361
1362maint set internal-error
1363maint show internal-error
1364 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1365
1366maint set internal-warning
1367maint show internal-warning
1368 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1369
ccd213ac
DJ
1370set exec-wrapper
1371show exec-wrapper
1372unset exec-wrapper
1373 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1374
aad4b048
JB
1375set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1376show multiple-symbols
1377 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1378 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1379 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1380
74960c60
VP
1381set breakpoint always-inserted
1382show breakpoint always-inserted
1383 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1384 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1385 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1386
0428b8f5
DJ
1387set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1388show arm fallback-mode
1389set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1390show arm force-mode
1391 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1392 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1393 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1394 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1395
10568435
JK
1396set disable-randomization
1397show disable-randomization
1398 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1399 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1400 multiple debugging sessions.
1401
d7713ae0
EZ
1402set non-stop
1403show non-stop
1404 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1405 a breakpoint.
1406
b3eb342c 1407set target-async
d7713ae0 1408show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1409 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1410 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1411 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1412 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1413
6c7a06a3
TT
1414set target-wide-charset
1415show target-wide-charset
1416 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1417 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1418
84603566
SL
1419set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1420show tcp auto-retry
1421set tcp connect-timeout
1422show tcp connect-timeout
1423 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1424 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1425 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1426
17a37d48
PP
1427set libthread-db-search-path
1428show libthread-db-search-path
1429 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1430 libthread_db.
1431
d4db2f36
PA
1432set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1433show schedule-multiple
1434 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1435 the current process.
1436
4e5d721f
DE
1437set stack-cache
1438show stack-cache
1439 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1440 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1441 affecting correctness.
1442
910c5da8
JB
1443set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1444show interactive-mode
1445 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1446 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1447 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1448 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1449 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1450
2277426b
PA
1451* Removed commands
1452
1453info forks
1454 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1455 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1456 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1457 command.
1458
1459fork NUM
1460 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1461 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1462 alias for the `fork' command.
1463
1464process PID
1465 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1466 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1467 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1468
1469delete fork NUM
1470 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1471 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1472 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1473 fork' command.
1474
1475detach fork NUM
1476 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1477 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1478 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1479 fork' command.
1480
a80b95ba
TG
1481* New native configurations
1482
1483x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1484
b8bfd3ed
JB
1485x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1486
75a2d5e7
TT
1487* New targets
1488
c28c63d8 1489Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1490x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1491x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1492S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1493
6de3146c
PA
1494* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1495 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1496
d5cbbe6e
JB
1497* Removed commands
1498
1499catch load
1500catch unload
1501 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1502
75feb17d 1503*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1504
af5ca30d
NH
1505* New native configurations
1506
1507NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1508Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1509
1510* New targets
1511
1512NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1513Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1514
7a404eba
PA
1515* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1516
1517 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1518 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1519 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1520 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1521
430ebac9
PA
1522* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1523(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1524
fe6fbf8b 1525* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1526is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1527
1528* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1529including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1530and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1531
10665d76
JB
1532* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1533accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1534more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1535
7cc46491
DJ
1536* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1537
d71340b8
DJ
1538* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1539registers on PowerPC targets.
1540
523c4513
DJ
1541* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1542targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1543
a6b151f1
DJ
1544* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1545commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1546
2d717e4f
DJ
1547* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1548extended-remote mode.
1549
24a836bd 1550* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1551The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1552error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1553The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1554
d0c678e6
UW
1555* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1556building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1557target architectures.
1558
d64a946d
TJB
1559* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1560Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1561now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1562stored in two consecutive float registers.
1563
ee163bf5
VP
1564* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1565breakpoints now.
1566
b93b6ca7 1567* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1568Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1569include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1570 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1571 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1572 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1573 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1574 of an assignment
1575 - Improved command completion in Ada
1576 - Several bug fixes
1577
d001be7a
DJ
1578* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1579process.
1580
a6b151f1
DJ
1581* New commands
1582
6d53d0af
JB
1583set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1584show print frame-arguments
1585 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1586 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1587
a6b151f1
DJ
1588remote put
1589remote get
1590remote delete
1591 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1592
1593* New MI commands
1594
1595-target-file-put
1596-target-file-get
1597-target-file-delete
1598 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1599
1600* New remote packets
1601
1602vFile:open:
1603vFile:close:
1604vFile:pread:
1605vFile:pwrite:
1606vFile:unlink:
1607 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1608
2d717e4f
DJ
1609vAttach
1610 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1611 mode.
1612
1613vRun
1614 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1615
8d5f9c6f 1616*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1617
19d378fc
MS
1618* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1619bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1620Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1621
3a40aaa0
UW
1622* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1623symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1624-Bsymbolic linker option.
1625
a6ec25f2
BW
1626* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1627recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1628is not supported.
1629
6dd09645
JB
1630* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1631frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1632
c9bb8148
DJ
1633* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
163432-bit or 64-bit register values.
1635
0d5de010
DJ
1636* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1637
23181151
DJ
1638* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1639target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1640a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1641
ea37ba09
DJ
1642* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1643automatically displayed as character or string data.
1644
1645* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1646arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1647as strings.
e1f48ead 1648
123dc839
DJ
1649* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1650for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1651only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1652
05a4558a
DJ
1653* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1654iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1655
7c963485
PA
1656* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1657ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1658has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1659
b18be20d
DJ
1660* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1661
0ca420ce
UW
1662* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1663
31d99776
DJ
1664* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1665layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1666segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1667
a4642986
MR
1668* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1669immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1670
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1671* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1672"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1673packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1674where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1675Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1676
1677* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1678(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1679
1680* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1681according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1682
c9bb8148
DJ
1683* New commands
1684
23776285
MR
1685set remoteflow
1686show remoteflow
1687 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1688 when debugging using remote targets.
1689
c9bb8148
DJ
1690set mem inaccessible-by-default
1691show mem inaccessible-by-default
1692 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1693 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1694 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1695 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1696 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1697
1698set breakpoint auto-hw
1699show breakpoint auto-hw
1700 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1701 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1702 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1703 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1704 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1705 including "next" and "finish".
1706
0e420bd8
JB
1707catch exception
1708catch exception unhandled
1709 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1710
1711catch assert
1712 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1713
f822c95b
DJ
1714set sysroot
1715show sysroot
1716 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1717 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1718 an alias to "set sysroot".
1719
83cc5c53
UW
1720info spu
1721 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1722 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1723 architecture.
1724
bd372731
MK
1725* New native configurations
1726
1727OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1728
23181151
DJ
1729set tdesc filename
1730unset tdesc filename
1731show tdesc filename
1732 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1733 not query the target for its built-in description.
1734
c9bb8148
DJ
1735* New targets
1736
54fe9172 1737OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1738MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1739Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1740
6dd09645
JB
1741* New remote packets
1742
1743QPassSignals:
1744 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1745 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1746
23181151
DJ
1747qXfer:features:read:
1748 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1749 features.
6dd09645 1750
83cc5c53
UW
1751qXfer:spu:read:
1752qXfer:spu:write:
1753 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1754 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1755
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1756qXfer:libraries:read:
1757 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1758 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1759 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1760 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1761
483367ee
DJ
1762* Removed targets
1763
1764Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1765
d08950c4
UW
1766alpha*-*-osf1*
1767alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1768d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1769hppa*-*-hiux*
1770i[34567]86-ncr-*
1771i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1772i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1773i[34567]86-*-netware*
1774i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1775i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1776i[34567]86-*-sco*
1777i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1778i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1779i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1780i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1781i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1782i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1783i[34567]86-*-isc*
1784m68*-cisco*-*
1785m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1786mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1787rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1788sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1789
7ce59000
DJ
1790* Other removed features
1791
1792target abug
1793target cpu32bug
1794target est
1795target rom68k
1796
1797 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1798
ea35711c
DJ
1799target hms
1800target e7000
1801target sh3
1802target sh3e
1803
1804 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1805 H8/300.
1806
1807target ocd
1808
1809 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1810 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1811 interfaces.
1812
7ce59000
DJ
1813DWARF 1 support
1814
1815 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1816 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1817
54d61198
DJ
1818Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1819
1820 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1821 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1822 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1823 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1824
ea35711c
DJ
1825MIPS ".pdr" sections
1826
1827 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1828 in debugging information.
1829
1830Scheme support
1831
1832 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1833 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1834
1a69e1e4
DJ
1835set mips stack-arg-size
1836set mips saved-gpreg-size
1837
1838 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1839
6dd09645 1840*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1841
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1842* New targets
1843
1844Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1845Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1846
6aec2e11
DJ
1847* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1848(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1849running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1850
1851* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1852Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1853supported.
1854
17218d91
DJ
1855* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1856broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1857
9ebce043
DJ
1858* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1859stub provides the required support.
1860
7d3d3ece
DJ
1861* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1862longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1863
4f8253f3
JB
1864* New commands
1865
1866set substitute-path
1867unset substitute-path
1868show substitute-path
1869 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1870 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1871 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1872 between compilation and debugging.
1873
9fa66fd7
AS
1874set trace-commands
1875show trace-commands
1876 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1877 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1878 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1879
1f5befc1
DJ
1880* REMOVED features
1881
1882The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1883
2ec3381a
DJ
1884Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1885an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1886
3d00d119
DJ
1887The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1888
be2a5f71
DJ
1889* New remote packets
1890
1891qSupported:
1892 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1893 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1894 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1895 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1896 target.
1897
0876f84a
DJ
1898qXfer:auxv:read:
1899 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1900 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1901
9ebce043
DJ
1902qXfer:memory-map:read:
1903 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1904 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1905
1906vFlashErase:
1907vFlashWrite:
1908vFlashDone:
1909 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1910
0876f84a
DJ
1911* Removed remote packets
1912
1913qPart:auxv:read:
1914 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1915 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1916
e374b601 1917*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1918
96309189
MS
1919* New targets
1920
1921Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1922
1923Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1924
53e5f3cf
AS
1925* New commands
1926
1927init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1928 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1929
ac264b3b
MS
1930The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1931
1932checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1933
1934restart <n> Return the program state to a
1935 previously saved state.
1936
1937info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1938
1939delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1940
1941set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1942 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1943
1944info forks List forks of the user program that
1945 are available to be debugged.
1946
1947fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1948 forks of the user program that are
1949 available to be debugged.
1950
1951delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1952 that are available to be debugged (and
1953 kill the forked process).
1954
1955detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1956 that are available to be debugged (and
1957 allow the process to continue).
1958
3950dc3f
NS
1959* New architecture
1960
1961Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1962
0ea3f30e
DJ
1963* Improved Windows host support
1964
1965GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1966native console support, and remote communications using either
1967network sockets or serial ports.
1968
f79daebb
GM
1969* Improved Modula-2 language support
1970
1971GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1972basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1973pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1974printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1975written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1976GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1977
acab6ab2
MM
1978* REMOVED features
1979
1980The ARM rdi-share module.
1981
f4267320
DJ
1982The Netware NLM debug server.
1983
53e5f3cf 1984*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1985
e0ecbda1
MK
1986* New native configurations
1987
02a677ac 1988OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1989OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1990
d64a6579
KB
1991* New targets
1992
1993Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1994
b33a6190
AS
1995* New command line options
1996
1997--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1998--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1999 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2000--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2001 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2002 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2003 with the --command (-x) option.
2004
11dced61
AC
2005* Deprecated commands removed
2006
2007The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2008removed:
2009
2010 Command Replacement
2011 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2012 othernames set arm disassembler
2013 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2014 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2015 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2016 regs info registers
2017
6fe85783
MK
2018* New BSD user-level threads support
2019
2020It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2021library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2022configurations are:
2023
2024FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2025FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2026OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2027
2028Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2029are not yet supported.
2030
5260ca71
MS
2031* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2032(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2033
e84ecc99
AC
2034* REMOVED configurations and files
2035
2036VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2037Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2038National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2039
31e35378
JB
2040* New "set print array-indexes" command
2041
2042After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2043when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2044behavior.
2045
e85e5c83
MK
2046* VAX floating point support
2047
2048GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2049
d91e9901
AS
2050* User-defined command support
2051
2052In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2053to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2054section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2055
f2cb65ca
MC
2056*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2057
f47b1503
AS
2058* New command line option
2059
2060GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2061debugging.
2062
f2cb65ca
MC
2063* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2064
2065GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2066information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2067by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2068proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2069to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2070
d08c0230
AC
2071* Internationalization
2072
2073When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2074internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2075continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2076
117ea3cf
PH
2077* Ada
2078
2079Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2080implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2081into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2082
d08c0230
AC
2083* New native configurations
2084
2085GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2086
2087* Remote 'p' packet
2088
2089GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2090packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2091
2092* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2093
2094GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2095The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2096features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2097i386 application).
2098
2099GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2100compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2101continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2102configurations:
2103
2104hppa-*-hpux
2105ia64-*-aix
2106mips-*-irix*
2107*-*-lynx
2108mips-*-linux-gnu
2109sds protocol
2110xdr protocol
2111powerpc bdm protocol
2112
2113Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2114made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2115
2116* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2117
2118Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2119been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2120configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2121permanently REMOVED.
2122
2123h8300-*-*
2124mcore-*-*
2125mn10300-*-*
2126ns32k-*-*
2127sh64-*-*
2128v850-*-*
2129
ebb7c577
AC
2130*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2131
2132* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2133
2134When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2135heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2136been fixed.
2137
2138* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2139
2140When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2141fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2142IRIX long double values).
2143
2144* VAX and "next"
2145
2146A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2147command. This problem has been fixed.
2148
860660cb 2149*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2150
0dea2468
AC
2151* Fix for ``many threads''
2152
2153On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2154rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2155error message:
2156
2157 ptrace: No such process.
2158 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2159
2160This problem has been fixed.
2161
2c07db7a
AC
2162* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2163
2164Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2165GDB to dump core).
2166
c23968a2
JB
2167* New ``start'' command.
2168
2169This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2170
71009278
MK
2171* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2172
2173Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2174live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2175platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2176
2177FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2178FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2179NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2180NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2181NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2182OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2183OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2184OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2185OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2186
3c0b7db2
AC
2187* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2188
2189Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2190These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2191of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2192call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2193signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2194
73cc75f3
AC
2195Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2196features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2197include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2198
7243600a
BF
2199* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2200
6f606e1c
MK
2201* New native configurations
2202
97dc871c 2203GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2204OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2205OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2206OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2207OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2208NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2209OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2210
a1b461bf
AC
2211* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2212
2213GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2214The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2215including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2216migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2217compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2218work, was also included.
2219
2220GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2221module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2222
2223h8300-*-*
2224mcore-*-*
2225mn10300-*-*
2226ns32k-*-*
2227sh64-*-*
2228v850-*-*
2229xstormy16-*-*
2230
2231Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2232made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2233
3c7012f5
AC
2234* REMOVED configurations and files
2235
2236Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2237Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2238Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2239Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2240Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2241AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2242Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2243decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2244riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2245sonymips mips-sony-*
2246sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2247
e5fe55f7
AC
2248*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2249
2250* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2251
2252The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2253GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2254command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2255program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2256with GDB".
2257
2258* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2259
2260Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2261libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2262cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2263GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2264shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2265the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2266are created.
2267
2268Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2269
2270* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2271
2272The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2273non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2274compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2275
2276* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2277
2278Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2279wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2280
2281* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2282
2283The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2284permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2285systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2286
2287* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2288
2289Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2290has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2291
2292* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2293
2294GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2295its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2296panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2297
2298* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2299
2300When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2301by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2302not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2303
faae5abe 2304*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2305
9175c9a3
MC
2306* Removed --with-mmalloc
2307
2308Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2309conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2310
3cc87ec0
MK
2311* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2312
2313The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2314the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2315and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2316you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2317
f0424ef6
MK
2318* Revised SPARC target
2319
2320The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2321FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2322support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2323from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2324(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2325
59659be2
ILT
2326* New C++ demangler
2327
2328GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2329names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2330with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2331programs.
2332
9e08b29b
DJ
2333* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2334
2335GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2336arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2337encountered these.
2338
8dfe8985
DC
2339* C++ nested types and namespaces
2340
2341GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2342improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2343is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2344Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2345namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2346"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2347frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2348if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2349GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2350
cced5e27
MK
2351* New native configurations
2352
2353NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2354OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2355OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2356OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2357OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2358
b4b4b794
KI
2359* New debugging protocols
2360
2361M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2362
7989c619
AC
2363* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2364
2365The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2366and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2367tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2368
5994185b
AC
2369* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2370
2371Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2372been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2373configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2374permanently REMOVED.
2375
2376Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2377Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2378Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2379Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2380Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2381AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2382Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2383decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2384riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2385sonymips mips-sony-*
2386sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2387
0ddabb4c
AC
2388* REMOVED configurations and files
2389
2390SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2391SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2392Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2393Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2394H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2395HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2396HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2397HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2398PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2399386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2400Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2401 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2402 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2403SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2404SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2405Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2406Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2407
c7f1390e
DJ
2408*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2409
1fe43d45
AC
2410* Objective-C
2411
2412Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2413integrated into GDB.
2414
e6beb428
AC
2415* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2416
2417DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2418information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2419By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2420backtraces.
2421
2422The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2423have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2424DWARF 2 CFI support.
2425
2426* Hosted file I/O.
2427
2428GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2429file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2430remote protocol documentation for details.
2431
2432* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2433
2434All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2435architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2436to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2437ppc32 on ppc64).
2438
2439* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2440
2441GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2442per-thread variables.
2443
2444* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2445
2446GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2447GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2448
2449* Separate debug info.
2450
2451GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2452automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2453of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2454system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2455and optional debug files.
2456
2457* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2458
2459DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2460describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2461debugger.
2462
2463GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2464for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2465
2466* Java
2467
2468A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2469Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2470considered "useable".
2471
85f8f974
DJ
2472* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2473
2474The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2475commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2476kernel.
2477
0fac0b41
DJ
2478* GDB supports logging output to a file
2479
2480There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2481used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2482
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2483* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2484
2485The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2486disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2487command.
2488
e286caf2 2489* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2490
2491The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2492registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2493
d28f9cdf
DJ
2494* Profiling support
2495
2496A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2497be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2498session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2499"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2500data, for more informative profiling results.
2501
da0f9dcd
AC
2502* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2503
2504The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2505option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2506"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2507
2508Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2509removed.
2510
fb9b6b35
JJ
2511Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2512Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2513Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2514 in a subsequent -var-update.
2515
954a4db8
MK
2516* New native configurations.
2517
2518FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2519
6760f9e6
JB
2520* Multi-arched targets.
2521
b4263afa 2522HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2523Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2524
1b831c93
AC
2525* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2526
2527Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2528been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2529configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2530permanently REMOVED.
2531
8b0e5691 2532Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2533Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2534H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2535HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2536HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2537HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2538PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2539Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2540 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2541 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2542Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2543Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2544
5835abe7
NC
2545* REMOVED configurations and files
2546
2547V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2548Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2549IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2550i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2551i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2552i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2553HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2554 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2555 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2556Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2557Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2558Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2559OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2560I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2561
a094c6fb
AC
2562* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2563
2564The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2565the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2566context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2567address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2568The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2569
299ffc64 2570*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2571
46248966
AC
2572* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2573
2574When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2575`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2576in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2577library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2578shared libs like mad''.
2579
b9d14705 2580* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2581
b9d14705
DJ
2582Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2583the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2584arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2585powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2586
e0e9281e
JB
2587* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2588
2589GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2590and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2591they expand.
2592
dd73b9bb
AC
2593The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2594invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2595
2596The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2597macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2598
e0e9281e
JB
2599Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2600information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2601your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2602information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2603
2250ee0c
CV
2604* Multi-arched targets.
2605
6e3ba3b8
JT
2606DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2607DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2608NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2609National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2610Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2611Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2612
cd9bfe15 2613* New targets.
e33ce519 2614
456f8b9d
DB
2615Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2616
e33ce519 2617
da8ca43d
JT
2618* New native configurations
2619
2620Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2621SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2622MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2623UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2624
cd9bfe15
AC
2625* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2626
2627Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2628been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2629configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2630permanently REMOVED.
2631
92eb23c5 2632Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2633OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2634IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2635Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2636Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2637Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2638i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2639i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2640i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2641HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2642 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2643 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2644I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2645
db034ac5
AC
2646* OBSOLETE languages
2647
2648CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2649
cd9bfe15
AC
2650* REMOVED configurations and files
2651
2652AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2653A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2654AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2655AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2656AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2657
2658testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2659
20f01a46
DH
2660* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2661
2662This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2663commands. The default is 1024.
2664
a5941fbf
MK
2665* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2666
2667Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2668
89743e04
MS
2669* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2670
2671These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2672to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2673from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2674
9fb14e79
JB
2675* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2676
2677The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2678including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2679of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2680
2037aebb
AC
2681*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2682
2683* New targets.
2684
2685Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2686
2687* Bug fixes
2688
2689gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2690mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2691Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2692
2693gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2694dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2695Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2696
2697Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2698Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2699By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2700
2701i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2702avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2703By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2704
37057839 2705*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2706
1a703748
MS
2707* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2708
2709This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2710really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2711In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2712target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2713This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2714(notably embedded) targets.
2715
cefd4ef5
MS
2716* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2717
55241689
AC
2718This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2719process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2720GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2721hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2722
352ed7b4
MS
2723* New command line option
2724
2725GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2726
2727* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2728
2729There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2730command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2731a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2732be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2733open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2734issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2735a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2736it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2737GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2738is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2739
fe419ffc
RE
2740* Changes in ARM configurations.
2741
2742Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2743configuration is fully multi-arch.
2744
eb7cedd9
MK
2745* New native configurations
2746
fe419ffc 2747ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2748x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2749AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2750Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2751
c9f63e6b
CV
2752* New targets
2753
2754Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2755
9b4ff276
AC
2756* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2757
2758Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2759been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2760configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2761permanently REMOVED.
2762
2763AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2764A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2765AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2766AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2767AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2768
b4ceaee6 2769testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2770
e2caac18
AC
2771* REMOVED configurations and files
2772
2773TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2774WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2775PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2776PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2777PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2778Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2779Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2780 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2781SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2782Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2783Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2784ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2785Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2786
c2a727fa
TT
2787* Changes to command line processing
2788
2789The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2790for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2791
467d8519
TT
2792* Changes to key bindings
2793
2794There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2795
7072a954
AC
2796*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2797
2798Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2799
2800Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2801corrupted.
2802
2803Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2804
2805Numerous documentation fixes.
2806
2807Numerous testsuite fixes.
2808
34f47bc4 2809*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2810
2811* New native configurations
2812
2813Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2814x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2815MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2816MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2817ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2818s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2819
bf64bfd6
AC
2820* New targets
2821
def90278 2822Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2823CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2824UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2825
17e78a56 2826* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2827
2828x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2829Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2830Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2831 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2832TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2833WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2834Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2835PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2836PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2837PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2838SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2839Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2840ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2841Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2842
17e78a56
AC
2843stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2844kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2845
7fcca85b
AC
2846Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2847been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2848configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2849permanently REMOVED.
2850
a196c81c 2851* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2852
2853Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2854Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2855Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2856ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2857Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2858ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2859
6d6b80e5 2860* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2861
6d6b80e5 2862GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2863sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2864present.
2865
bf64bfd6
AC
2866* Other news:
2867
e23194cb
EZ
2868* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2869
2870* The MI enabled by default.
2871
2872The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2873revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2874engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2875using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2876which is now deprecated.
2877
2878* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2879
2880GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2881main features are supported:
2882
2883 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2884
2885 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2886 extension;
2887
2888 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2889
2890 - a Pascal expression parser.
2891
2892However, some important features are not yet supported.
2893
2894 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2895
2896 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2897
2898 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2899 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2900
2901 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2902
2903 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2904
2905* Changes in completion.
2906
2907Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2908to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2909users expect at the shell prompt.
2910
2911Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2912`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2913program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2914files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2915be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2916considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2917name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2918
2919`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2920
2921* New platform-independent commands:
2922
2923It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2924hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2925documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2926
2927* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2928
d7275149
MK
2929Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2930revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2931many threads as your system allows you to have.
2932
e23194cb
EZ
2933Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2934
d7275149
MK
2935Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2936multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2937
2938* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2939
2940Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2941
e23194cb
EZ
2942GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2943debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2944supported.)
2945
2946* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2947
2948Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2949breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2950implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2951put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2952and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2953registers.
2954
2955The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2956debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2957watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2958
2959* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2960
2961New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2962the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2963
2964New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2965display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2966IDT.
2967
2968New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2969from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2970New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2971a given linear address.
2972
2973GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2974program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2975which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2976
2977DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2978
6c56c069
EZ
2979It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2980
e23194cb
EZ
2981* Changes in documentation.
2982
2983All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2984Documentation License.
2985
2986Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2987manual.
2988
2989TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2990
2991Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2992manual.
2993
2994The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2995documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2996hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2997
5d6640b1
AC
2998* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2999
3000The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3001``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3002contents of this file.
3003
1a1d8446
AC
3004* gdba.el deleted
3005
3006GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3007
9debab2f 3008*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3009
c63ce875
EZ
3010* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3011
3012Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3013programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3014displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3015greater level of detail.
3016
3017* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3018
3019It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3020bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3021on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3022written.
3023
3024* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3025
3026The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3027necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3028machines ``out of the box''.
3029
3030The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3031possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3032signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3033would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3034interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3035
3036It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3037standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3038even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3039and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3040terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3041
3042The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3043enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3044also works.
3045
3046DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3047GDB.
3048
3049It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3050directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3051times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3052breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3053
ed9a39eb
JM
3054* New native configurations
3055
3056ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3057PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3058
7a292a7a
SS
3059* New targets
3060
96baa820 3061Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3062x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3063PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3064TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3065
085dd6e6
JM
3066* OBSOLETE configurations
3067
3068Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3069Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3070Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3071ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3072Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3073
9debab2f
AC
3074Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3075but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3076these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3077be permanently REMOVED.
3078
5330533d
SS
3079* Gould support removed
3080
3081Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3082
bc9e5bbf
AC
3083* New features for SVR4
3084
3085On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3086without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3087load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3088
3089* Many C++ enhancements
3090
3091C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3092in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3093
adf40b2e
JM
3094* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3095
3096A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3097sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3098with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3099``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3100
3101 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3102 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3103
43e526b9
JM
3104* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3105
3106A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3107expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3108instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3109
3110The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3111added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3112
96baa820
JM
3113* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3114
3115The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3116``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3117include ``set remote P-packet''.
3118
11cf8741
JM
3119* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3120
3121The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3122accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3123``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3124
7876dd43
DB
3125* ``apropos'' command added.
3126
3127The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3128documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3129try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3130
bc9e5bbf
AC
3131* New MI interface
3132
3133A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3134interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3135process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3136"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3137enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3138
3139 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3140
c906108c
SS
3141*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3142
3143* New native configurations
3144
3145HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3146HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3147M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3148
3149* New targets
3150
3151Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3152Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3153Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3154
3155* OBSOLETE configurations
3156
3157Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3158
3159Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3160but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3161these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3162be permanently REMOVED.
3163
3164* ANSI/ISO C
3165
3166As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3167buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3168containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3169use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3170available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3171configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3172information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3173already.
3174
3175* Readline 2.2
3176
3177GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3178
3179* set extension-language
3180
3181You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3182languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3183you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3184 set extension-language .c c++
3185The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3186and their associated languages.
3187
3188* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3189
3190When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3191you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3192PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3193
3194 set processor NAME
3195
3196sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3197following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3198
3199 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3200 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3201 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3202 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3203 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3204 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3205 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3206 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3207 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3208 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3209 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3210
3211At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3212special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3213registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3214only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3215
3216* HP-UX support
3217
3218Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3219more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3220library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3221support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3222for xdb and dbx commands.
3223
3224* Catchpoints
3225
3226HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3227generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3228to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3229
3230This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3231argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3232output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3233
3234* Debugging across forks
3235
3236On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3237in the inferior.
3238
3239* TUI
3240
3241HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3242it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3243configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3244
3245* GDB remote protocol additions
3246
3247A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3248Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3249fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3250allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3251
3252For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3253full 64-bit address. The command
3254
3255 set remoteaddresssize 32
3256
3257can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3258the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3259will be discarded.
3260
3261In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3262command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3263
3264 maint packet heythere
3265
3266sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3267disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3268time.
3269
3270The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3271target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3272downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3273
3274* Tracing can collect general expressions
3275
3276You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3277further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3278doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3279
3280* mask-address variable for Mips
3281
3282For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3283a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3284of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3285
3286* Higher serial baud rates
3287
3288GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3289230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3290to achieve all of these rates.)
3291
3292* i960 simulator
3293
3294The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3295builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3296
3297
3298*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3299
3300* New native configurations
3301
3302Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3303Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3304Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3305PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3306PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3307Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3308Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3309
3310* New targets
3311
3312Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3313Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3314Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3315Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3316MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3317MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3318MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3319Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3320Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3321Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3322NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3323
3324* New debugging protocols
3325
3326ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3327M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3328DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3329PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3330PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3331Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3332
3333* DWARF 2
3334
3335All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3336format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3337information.
3338
3339* Java frontend
3340
3341GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3342only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3343
3344* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3345
3346For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3347loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3348locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3349
3350* Live range splitting
3351
3352GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3353range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3354more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3355
3356* Hurd support
3357
3358GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3359updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3360
3361* ARM Thumb support
3362
3363GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3364instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3365instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3366accordingly.
3367
3368* MIPS16 support
3369
3370GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3371instruction set.
3372
3373* Overlay support
3374
3375GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3376linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3377will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3378control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3379additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3380in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3381
3382* info symbol
3383
3384The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3385the symbol at the specified address.
3386
3387* Trace support
3388
3389The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3390asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3391extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3392includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3393file tracepoint.c for more details.
3394
3395* MIPS simulator
3396
3397Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3398by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3399of most MIPS variants.
3400
3401* Sparc simulator
3402
3403Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3404by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3405Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3406
3407* set architecture
3408
3409For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3410basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3411architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3412the possible architectures.
3413
3414*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3415
3416* New native configurations
3417
3418Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3419M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3420PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3421PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3422PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3423RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3424
3425* New targets
3426
3427ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3428I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3429MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3430MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3431PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3432Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3433Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3434
3435* PowerPC simulator
3436
3437The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3438contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3439PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3440basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3441performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3442
3443* Solaris 2.5
3444
3445GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3446
3447* Windows 95/NT native
3448
3449GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3450To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3451which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3452Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3453ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3454
3455* dont-repeat command
3456
3457If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3458command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3459useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3460extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3461
3462* Send break instead of ^C
3463
3464The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3465rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3466GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3467
3468* Remote protocol timeout
3469
3470The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3471that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3472to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3473
3474* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3475
3476By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3477loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3478stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3479when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3480in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3481
3482Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3483/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3484automatically on hpux10.
3485
3486* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3487
3488Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3489
3490* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3491
3492When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3493may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3494the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3495every character. The default value is 1050.
3496
3497* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3498
3499If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3500a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3501replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3502details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3503remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3504to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3505
3506* Speedups for remote debugging
3507
3508GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3509the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3510and more efficient S-record downloading.
3511
3512* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3513
3514GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3515Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3516
3517*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3518
3519* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3520
3521The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3522can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3523
3524* Remote targets use caching
3525
3526Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3527remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3528it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3529debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3530off' turns the the data cache off.
3531
3532* Remote targets may have threads
3533
3534The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3535in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3536gdb/remote.c for details.
3537
3538* NetROM support
3539
3540If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3541support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3542acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3543write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3544support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3545another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3546sequence is something like
3547
3548 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3549 load <prog>
3550 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3551
3552* Macintosh host
3553
3554GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3555may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3556it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3557available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3558device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3559directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3560scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3561mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3562
3563* Autoconf
3564
3565GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3566but does simplify configuration and building.
3567
3568* hpux10
3569
3570GDB now supports hpux10.
3571
3572*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3573
3574* New native configurations
3575
3576x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3577x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3578NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3579Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3580
3581* New targets
3582
3583A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3584HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3585CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3586PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3587WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3588
3589* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3590
3591GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3592possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3593filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3594the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3595if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3596
3597* Arguments to user-defined commands
3598
3599User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3600Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3601trivial example:
3602define adder
3603 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3604
3605To execute the command use:
3606adder 1 2 3
3607
3608Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3609Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3610use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3611
3612* New `if' and `while' commands
3613
3614This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3615commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3616expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3617execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3618terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3619`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3620if the expression is zero.
3621
3622* Fortran source language mode
3623
3624GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3625Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3626variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3627with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3628Fortran compilers.
3629
3630* Better HPUX support
3631
3632Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3633running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3634processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3635for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3636that behavior do the following before running the program:
3637
3638 adb -w a.out
3639 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3640 control-d
3641
3642This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3643To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3644
3645 adb -w a.out
3646 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3647 control-d
3648
3649You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3650the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3651external linkage.
3652
3653GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3654HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3655
3656* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3657
3658You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3659commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3660current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3661"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3662associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3663configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3664
3665* New DOS host serial code
3666
3667This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3668no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3669a PC's serial port.
3670
3671*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3672
3673* New "complete" command
3674
3675This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3676were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3677
3678* Trailing space optional in prompt
3679
3680"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3681allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3682
3683* Breakpoint hit counts
3684
3685"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3686has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3687can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3688to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3689less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3690that breakpoint.
3691
3692* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3693
3694"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3695an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3696arrays actually contain only short strings.
3697
3698* Shared library breakpoints
3699
3700In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3701breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3702
3703* Hardware watchpoints
3704
3705There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3706targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3707
55241689 3708Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3709
3710* Annotations
3711
3712Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3713and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3714
3715* Improved Irix 5 support
3716
3717GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3718
3719* Improved HPPA support
3720
3721GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3722
3723* New native configurations
3724
3725Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3726HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3727Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3728RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3729
3730* New targets
3731
3732OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3733MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3734Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3735
3736* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3737
3738There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3739This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3740
3741* Fixes
3742
3743As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3744and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3745
3746*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3747
3748* Irix 5 is now supported
3749
3750* HPPA support
3751
3752GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3753to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3754GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3755of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3756can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3757
3758
3759*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3760
3761* User visible changes:
3762
3763* Remote Debugging
3764
3765The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3766target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3767debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3768integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3769debugging info for the mips target).
3770
3771* DEC Alpha native support
3772
3773GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3774debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3775work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3776Alpha-specific notes.
3777
3778* Preliminary thread implementation
3779
3780GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3781
3782* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3783
3784This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3785to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3786for details).
3787
3788* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3789
3790This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3791mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3792call methods, ...etc.
3793
3794*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3795
3796 * User visible changes:
3797
3798Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3799supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3800other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3801somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3802
3803Filename completion now works.
3804
3805When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3806arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3807addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3808
3809All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3810vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3811should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3812your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3813to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3814
3815 * DEC alpha support
3816
3817This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3818cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3819
3820
3821*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3822
3823 * Testsuite
3824
3825This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3826The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3827via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3828
3829 * C++ demangling
3830
3831'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3832emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3833Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3834disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3835use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3836
3837 * Simulators
3838
3839GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3840So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3841Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3842
3843 * New targets supported
3844
3845H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3846H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3847SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3848Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3849IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3850
3851Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3852version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3853GO32 memory extender.
3854
3855 * New remote protocols
3856
3857MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3858
3859 * New source languages supported
3860
3861This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3862used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3863into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3864
3865
3866*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3867
3868 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3869
3870GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3871version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3872University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3873compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3874format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3875(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3876
3877Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3878
3879 * Faster and better demangling
3880
3881We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3882demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3883character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3884only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3885This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3886increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3887symbol lookups.
3888
3889`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3890from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3891compiler does not actually implement.
3892
3893 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3894
3895In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3896inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3897recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3898very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3899The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3900circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3901fix.
3902
3903The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3904release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3905
3906 * Improved configure script
3907
3908The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3909you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3910host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3911done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3912
3913We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3914version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3915`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3916The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3917only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3918We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3919
3920 * Documentation improvements
3921
3922There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3923produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3924before submitting changes.
3925
3926The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3927M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3928`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3929you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3930a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3931
3932*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3933We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3934been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3935or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3936`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3937around this problem.
3938
3939 * New features
3940
3941GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3942the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3943`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3944the target program.
3945
3946The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3947how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3948
3949 * New native hosts supported
3950
3951HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3952386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3953
3954 * New targets supported
3955
3956AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3957
3958 * New file formats supported
3959
3960BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3961HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3962
3963 * Major bug fixes
3964
3965Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3966
3967We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3968printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3969
3970We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3971for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3972release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3973
3974You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3975will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3976
3977We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3978for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3979especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3980libraries.
3981
3982The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3983information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3984command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3985any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3986when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3987
3988 * Internal improvements
3989
3990GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3991debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3992
3993GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3994Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3995symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3996contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3997shared code that handles any of them.
3998
3999 * New command line options
4000
4001We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4002
4003 * Mmalloc licensing
4004
4005The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4006General Public License.
4007
4008*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4009
4010 * Host/native/target split
4011
4012GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4013hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4014target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4015local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4016ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4017
4018The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4019GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4020is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4021code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4022any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4023built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4024handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4025
4026GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4027It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4028plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4029
4030 * New hosts supported
4031
4032HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4033386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4034386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4035
4036 * New targets supported
4037
4038Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
403968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4040
4041 * New native hosts supported
4042
4043386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4044 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4045386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4046
4047 * New file formats supported
4048
4049BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4050supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4051format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4052
4053 * New commands
4054
4055`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4056`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4057These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4058
4059`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4060
4061You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4062scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4063prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4064executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4065
4066 * C++ improvements
4067
4068We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4069info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4070symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4071
4072Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4073
4074 * Major bug fixes
4075
4076The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4077fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4078by the compiler.
4079
4080We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4081support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4082
4083John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4084slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4085that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4086purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4087the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4088mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4089
4090Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4091about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4092completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4093we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4094
4095 * AMD 29k support
4096
4097A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4098specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4099calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4100usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4101in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4102
4103We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4104Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4105of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4106resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4107
4108 * Remote interfaces
4109
4110We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4111with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4112message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4113This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4114needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4115breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4116each instruction being stepped through.
4117
4118The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4119registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4120
4121There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4122find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4123Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4124processor with a serial port.
4125
4126 * Configuration
4127
4128Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4129`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4130supported, and what files each one uses.
4131
4132 * Library changes
4133
4134There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4135disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4136Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4137disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4138
4139The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4140Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4141can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4142grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4143
4144 * Documentation
4145
4146The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4147reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4148as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4149encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4150system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4151bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4152
4153And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4154
4155
4156*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4157
4158 * Better support for C++ function names
4159
4160GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4161names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4162(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4163single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4164Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4165
4166GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4167the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4168You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4169lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4170for the list of formats.
4171
4172 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4173
4174Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4175C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4176directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4177can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4178usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4179about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4180this problem.)
4181
4182 * New 'maintenance' command
4183
4184All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4185the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4186can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4187
4188 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4189 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4190 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4191 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4192 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4193 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4194
4195The following commands are new:
4196
4197 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4198 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4199 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4200
4201 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4202
4203We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4204(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4205be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4206read after argv processing.
4207
4208 * New hosts supported
4209
4210Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4211
55241689 4212GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4213
4214We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4215is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4216for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4217masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4218fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4219It costs extra.
4220
4221 * New targets supported
4222
4223Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4224
4225 * More smarts about finding #include files
4226
4227GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4228all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4229greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4230especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4231the one that contains your sources.
4232
4233We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4234breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4235try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4236
4237 * Interesting infernals change
4238
4239GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4240section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4241target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4242stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4243
4244 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4245
4246There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4247 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4248 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4249
4250See the ChangeLog for details.
4251
4252*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4253
4254 * New machines supported (host and target)
4255
4256IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4257
4258SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4259
4260 * New malloc package
4261
4262GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4263Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4264capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4265This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4266pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4267more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4268
4269 * info proc
4270
4271The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4272'help info proc' for details.
4273
4274 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4275
4276The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4277Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4278possible.
4279
4280 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4281
4282Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4283support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4284conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4285environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4286that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4287in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4288
4289 * Cross byte order fixes
4290
4291Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4292targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4293
4294 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4295
4296If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4297system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4298`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4299program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4300called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4301Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4302and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4303the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4304option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4305starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4306
4307You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4308the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4309information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4310slower, but makes future operations faster.
4311
4312The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4313build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4314A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4315use is:
4316
4317 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4318
4319The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4320It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4321shared across multiple host platforms.
4322
4323 * longjmp() handling
4324
4325GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4326siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4327all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4328platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4329
4330 * Solaris 2.0
4331
4332Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4333this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4334reading symbols.
4335
4336 * Bug fixes
4337
4338As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4339People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4340crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4341
4342*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4343
4344 * New machines supported (host and target)
4345
4346SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4347 (except core files)
4348BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4349Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4350
4351 * New machines supported (target)
4352
4353AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4354
4355 * C++ support
4356
4357GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4358The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4359per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4360
4361GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4362`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4363extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4364good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4365will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4366released.
4367
4368 * New features for SVR4
4369
4370GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4371shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4372only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4373
4374The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4375on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4376it prints the address mappings of the process.
4377
4378If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4379bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4380
4381 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4382
4383Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4384now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4385skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4386make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4387same code linked statically.
4388
4389 * New Getopt
4390
4391GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4392version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4393continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4394Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4395added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4396future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4397
4398 * Bugs fixed
4399
4400The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4401Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4402See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4403
4404
4405*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4406
4407 * New machines supported (host and target)
4408
4409Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4410NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4411Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4412
4413 * Almost SCO Unix support
4414
4415We had hoped to support:
4416SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4417(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4418that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4419about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4420
4421 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4422
4423GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4424debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4425is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4426send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4427reqired (if any).
4428
4429 * New Readline
4430
4431GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4432is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4433required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4434
4435 * Bugs fixed
4436
4437The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4438Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4439See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4440
4441 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4442
4443GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4444supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4445symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4446
4447Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4448mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4449debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4450mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4451version 2.
4452
4453Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4454really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4455line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4456variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4457situation somewhat.
4458
4459When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4460However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4461methods.
4462
4463We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4464DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4465encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4466
4467
4468*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4469
4470 * Improved configuration
4471
4472Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4473Porting BFD is simpler.
4474
4475 * Stepping improved
4476
4477The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4478of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4479in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4480function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4481
4482 * Bug fixing
4483
4484Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4485
4486 * New host supported (not target)
4487
4488Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4489
4490
4491*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4492
4493 * Multiple source language support
4494
4495GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4496It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4497and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4498language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4499You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4500`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4501
4502 * GDB and Modula-2
4503
4504GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4505currently under development at the State University of New York at
4506Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4507continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4508
4509Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4510debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4511symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4512
4513There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4514in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4515
4516 * set write on/off
4517
4518GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4519a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4520the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4521by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4522effect immediately.
4523
4524 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4525
4526When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4527shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4528The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4529examining core files.
4530
4531 * set listsize
4532
4533You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4534The default is 10.
4535
4536 * New machines supported (host and target)
4537
4538SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4539Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4540Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4541
4542 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4543
4544IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4545
4546 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4547
4548AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4549AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4550Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4551
4552 * New remote interfaces
4553
4554AMD 29000 Adapt
4555AMD 29000 Minimon
4556
4557
4558*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4559
4560 * New Facilities
4561
4562Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4563
4564Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4565target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4566is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4567remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4568remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4569also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4570using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4571stub on the target system.
4572
4573New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4574
4575GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4576library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4577object file types such as a.out and coff.
4578
4579There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4580refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4581
4582
4583 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4584
4585All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4586by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4587
4588For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4589``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4590Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4591
4592What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4593print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4594will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4595all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4596
4597confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4598 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4599 it is already running. Default is ON.
4600
4601editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4602 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4603 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4604 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4605 Default is ON.
4606
4607history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4608 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4609 or the value of the environment variable
4610 GDBHISTFILE.
4611
4612history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4613 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4614 HISTSIZE.
4615
4616history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4617 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4618 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4619
4620history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4621 history expansion will be performed on
4622 command line input. The default is OFF.
4623
4624radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4625 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4626 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4627
4628height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4629 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4630 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4631 variable TERM.
4632
4633width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4634 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4635 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4636 variable TERM.
4637
4638Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4639``set width'' instead.
4640
4641print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4642 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4643 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4644 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4645
4646print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4647 is OFF.
4648
4649print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4650 "raw" form if off.
4651
4652print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4653 like instructions.
4654
4655print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4656
4657
4658 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4659
4660The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4661new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4662are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4663window.
4664
4665
4666 * Support for Shared Libraries
4667
4668GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4669Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4670before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4671happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4672At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4673from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4674shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4675It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4676
4677sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4678 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4679 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4680
4681info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4682
4683
4684 * Watchpoints
4685
4686A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4687expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4688tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4689quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4690problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4691more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4692
4693watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4694
4695info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4696
4697delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4698disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4699enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4700
4701
4702 * C++ multiple inheritance
4703
4704When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4705for C++ programs.
4706
4707 * C++ exception handling
4708
4709Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4710ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4711the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4712handler's context).
4713
4714catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4715 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4716 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4717
4718info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4719 current stack frame.
4720
4721
4722 * Minor command changes
4723
4724The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4725command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4726is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4727
4728The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4729at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4730frames without printing.
4731
4732 * New directory command
4733
4734'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4735The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4736about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4737with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4738find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4739
4740 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4741
4742For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4743for more details.
4744
4745GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4746two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4747Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4748where the program that you are debugging will run.