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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.1
5
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6* Windows Thread Information Block access.
7
8 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
9 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
10 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
11 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
12 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
13 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
14
15* New remote packets
16
17qGetTIBAddr
18
19 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
20
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21* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
22 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
23 a directory.
24
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25* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
26
27 - GDBserver now support tracepoints. The feature is currently
28 supported by the i386-linux and amd64-linux builds.
29
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30* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
31 it understands register description.
32
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33* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
34
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35* X86 general purpose registers
36
37 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
38 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
39 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
40 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
41 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
42
95a42b64 43* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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44 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
45 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
46 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
47 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
48 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 49
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50* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
51 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
52 in the specified file.
53
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54* New commands
55
56save breakpoints <filename>
57 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
58 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
59 definitions, use the `source' command.
60
61`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
62is now deprecated.
63
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64* Python scripting
65
adc36818 66** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
fa33c3cd 67 tables, program spaces, and frame's code blocks.
f870a310 68
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69** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
70 gdb.progspaces, and gdb.current_progspace.
71
72** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 73
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74* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
75there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
76tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
77regular breakpoints.
78
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79* New targets
80
81ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
82
bfbf3774 83*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 84
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85* C++ Improvements
86
87 ** Namespace Support
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88
89 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
90 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
91 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
92 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
93 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
94
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95 ** Bug Fixes
96
97 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
98 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
99 qualified name.
100
101 ** Cast Operators
102
103 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
104 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
105
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106* New targets
107
108Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 109Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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110
111* New Simulators
112
113Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 114Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 115
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116* Multi-program debugging.
117
118 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
119 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
120 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
121 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
122 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
123 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
124 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
125 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
126
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127* New tracing features
128
129 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
130
131 ** Trace state variables
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132
133 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
134 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
135 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
136 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
137 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
138 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
139 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
140 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
141 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
142 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 143
d5551862 144 ** Fast tracepoints
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145
146 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
147 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
148 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
149 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
150 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
151 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
152 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
153 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
154 the regular trace command.
155
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156 ** Disconnected tracing
157
158 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
159 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
160 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
161 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
162 connection is lost unexpectedly.
163
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164 ** Trace files
165
166 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
167 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
168 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
169 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
170 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
171 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
172 <name>".
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173
174 ** Circular trace buffer
175
176 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
177 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
178 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
179 not be available for all target agents.
180
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181* Changed commands
182
183disassemble
184 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
185 the arguments to be comma-separated.
186
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187info variables
188 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
189 which only declare a variable are not shown.
190
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191source
192 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
193 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
194 support.
195
196 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
197 "set script-extension" (see below).
198
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199* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
200
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201record save [<FILENAME>]
202 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
203 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
204
205record restore <FILENAME>
206 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
207 earlier time, for replay debugging.
208
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209add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
210 Add a new inferior.
211
212clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
213 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
214 inferior has loaded.
215
216remove-inferior ID
217 Remove an inferior.
218
219maint info program-spaces
220 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
221
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222set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
223show remote interrupt-sequence
224 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
225 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
226 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
227 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
228 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
229
230set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
231show remote interrupt-on-connect
232 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
233 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
234 Linux kernel.
235
236set remotebreak [on | off]
237show remotebreak
238Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
239
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240tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
241 Create or modify a trace state variable.
242
243info tvariables
244 List trace state variables and their values.
245
246delete tvariable $NAME ...
247 Delete one or more trace state variables.
248
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249teval EXPR, ...
250 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
251 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
252
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253ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
254 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
255
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256* New expression syntax
257
258 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
259 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
260
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261* New options
262
263set follow-exec-mode new|same
264show follow-exec-mode
265 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
266 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
267 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
268
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269set default-collect EXPR, ...
270show default-collect
271 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
272 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
273 such as registers or a critical global variable.
274
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275set disconnected-tracing
276show disconnected-tracing
277 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
278 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
279 upon disconnection.
280
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281set circular-trace-buffer
282show circular-trace-buffer
283 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
284 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
285 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
286 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
287
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288set script-extension off|soft|strict
289show script-extension
290 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
291 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
292 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
293 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
294 evaluation failed.
295 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
296
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297set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
298show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
299 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
300 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
301 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
302 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
303 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
304 is on.
305
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306* Python API Improvements
307
308 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
309 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
310 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
311
312 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
313 `is_base_class' attribute.
314
315 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
316
317 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
318 evaluate an expression.
319
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320* New remote packets
321
322QTDV
323 Define a trace state variable.
324
325qTV
326 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
327
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328QTDisconnected
329 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
330
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331QTBuffer:circular
332 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
333
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334qTfP, qTsP
335 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
336
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337* Bug fixes
338
339Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
340
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341Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
342much more reliable. In particular:
343 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
344 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
345 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
346 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
347 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
348 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
349 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
350 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
351 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
352 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
353 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
354 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
355 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
356 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
357 non-threaded programs.
358
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359PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
360This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
361libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
362executable program.
363
abc7453d 364*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 365
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366* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
367dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
368them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
369for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
370"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
371
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372* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
373breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
374or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
375the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
376for tracepoint actions.
377
e6158f16 378* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
7280022e 379in hex as well as in symbolic form.
e6158f16 380
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381* Process record and replay
382
383 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
384 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
385 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
386 execute commands.
387
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388* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
389step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
390set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
391reverse execution.
392
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393* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
394feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3952.6.28 or later.
396
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397* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
398target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
399char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
400literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
401U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
402`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
403system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
404the installation instructions for more information.
405
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406* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
407remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
408with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
409the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
410
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411* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
412and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
413
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414* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
415now complete on file names.
416
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417* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
418completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
419For instance, consider:
420
421 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
422 # struct example variable;
423 (gdb) p variable.
424
425If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
426completions will be "f1" and "f2".
427
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428* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
429the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
430
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431* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
432operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
433macros.
434
47a3467a 435* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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436the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
437implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
438
439* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
440registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
441can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
442and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 443
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444* New remote packets
445
446qSearch:memory:
447 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
448
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449QStartNoAckMode
450 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
451 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
452 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
453
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454vKill
455 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
456 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
457
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458qXfer:osdata:read
459 Obtains additional operating system information
460
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461qXfer:siginfo:read
462qXfer:siginfo:write
463 Read or write additional signal information.
464
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465* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
466
467 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
468 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
469 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
470
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471* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
472source+assembly.
473
c055b101 474* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 475DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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476
477* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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478and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
479`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 480
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481* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
482with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
483
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484* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
485
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486* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
487
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488* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
489which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
490
1fddbabb 491* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 492list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 493
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494* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
495conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
496have also been fixed.
497
bfb8797a 498* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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499From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
500are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 501
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502* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
503example, given:
504
505 template<typename T> class C { };
506 C<char const *> c;
507
508GDB will now correctly handle all of:
509
510 ptype C<char const *>
511 ptype C<char const*>
512 ptype C<const char *>
513 ptype C<const char*>
514
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515* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
516
517 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
518 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
519
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520 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
521 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
522 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
523
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524 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
525 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
526
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527 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
528 gdbserver.
529
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530 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
531 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
532
533 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
534 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
535 as appropriate.
536
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537* Python scripting
538
539 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
540 available is determined at configure time.
541
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542 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
543
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544* Ada tasking support
545
546 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
547 been introduced:
548
549 info tasks
550 Print the list of Ada tasks.
551 info task N
552 Print detailed information about task number N.
553 task
554 Print the task number of the current task.
555 task N
556 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
557
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558* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
559add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
560
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561* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
562
563 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
564 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
565 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
566 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
567 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
568 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
569 below.
570
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571* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
572"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
573information.
574
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575* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
576to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
577architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
578See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
579more information.
580
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581* Multi-architecture debugging.
582
583 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
584 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
585 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
586 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
587 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
588
589* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
590use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
591Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
592powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
593--enable-targets configure option.
594
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595* Non-stop mode debugging.
596
597 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
598 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
599 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
600 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
601 section in the user manual for more information.
602
603 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
604 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
605 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
606 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
607 extensions on linux targets.
608
d7713ae0 609* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 610
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611catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
612 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
613 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
614 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
615 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
616 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
617 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
618 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
619 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
620
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621find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
622 val1 [, val2, ...]
623 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
624
d57a3c85
TJB
625maint set python print-stack
626maint show python print-stack
627 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
628
629python [CODE]
630 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
631
d7713ae0
EZ
632macro define
633macro list
634macro undef
635 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
636 interactively.
637
638info os processes
639 Show operating system information about processes.
640
2277426b
PA
641info inferiors
642 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
643
644inferior NUM
645 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
646
647detach inferior NUM
648 Detach from inferior number NUM.
649
650kill inferior NUM
651 Kill inferior number NUM.
652
d7713ae0
EZ
653* New options
654
3285f3fe
UW
655set spu stop-on-load
656show spu stop-on-load
657 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
658
ff1a52c6
UW
659set spu auto-flush-cache
660show spu auto-flush-cache
661 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
662 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
663
d7713ae0
EZ
664set sh calling-convention
665show sh calling-convention
666 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
667
e0a3ce09 668set debug timestamp
75feb17d 669show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
670 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
671
672set disassemble-next-line
673show disassemble-next-line
674 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
675 the debuggee stops.
676
677set remote noack-packet
678show remote noack-packet
679 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
680 under "New remote packets."
681
682set remote query-attached-packet
683show remote query-attached-packet
684 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
685
686set remote read-siginfo-object
687show remote read-siginfo-object
688 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
689 packet.
690
691set remote write-siginfo-object
692show remote write-siginfo-object
693 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
694 packet.
695
40ab02ce
MS
696set remote reverse-continue
697show remote reverse-continue
698 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
699
700set remote reverse-step
701show remote reverse-step
702 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
703
d7713ae0
EZ
704set displaced-stepping
705show displaced-stepping
706 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
707 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
708 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
709
710set debug displaced
711show debug displaced
712 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
713
714maint set internal-error
715maint show internal-error
716 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
717
718maint set internal-warning
719maint show internal-warning
720 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 721
ccd213ac
DJ
722set exec-wrapper
723show exec-wrapper
724unset exec-wrapper
725 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 726
aad4b048
JB
727set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
728show multiple-symbols
729 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
730 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
731 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
732
74960c60
VP
733set breakpoint always-inserted
734show breakpoint always-inserted
735 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
736 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
737 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
738
0428b8f5
DJ
739set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
740show arm fallback-mode
741set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
742show arm force-mode
743 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
744 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
745 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
746 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
747
10568435
JK
748set disable-randomization
749show disable-randomization
750 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
751 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
752 multiple debugging sessions.
753
d7713ae0
EZ
754set non-stop
755show non-stop
756 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
757 a breakpoint.
758
b3eb342c 759set target-async
d7713ae0 760show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
761 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
762 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
763 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
764 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
765
6c7a06a3
TT
766set target-wide-charset
767show target-wide-charset
768 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
769 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
770
84603566
SL
771set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
772show tcp auto-retry
773set tcp connect-timeout
774show tcp connect-timeout
775 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
776 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
777 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
778
17a37d48
PP
779set libthread-db-search-path
780show libthread-db-search-path
781 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
782 libthread_db.
783
d4db2f36
PA
784set schedule-multiple (on|off)
785show schedule-multiple
786 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
787 the current process.
788
4e5d721f
DE
789set stack-cache
790show stack-cache
791 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
792 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
793 affecting correctness.
794
910c5da8
JB
795set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
796show interactive-mode
797 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
798 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
799 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
800 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
801 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
802
2277426b
PA
803* Removed commands
804
805info forks
806 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
807 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
808 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
809 command.
810
811fork NUM
812 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
813 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
814 alias for the `fork' command.
815
816process PID
817 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
818 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
819 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
820
821delete fork NUM
822 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
823 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
824 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
825 fork' command.
826
827detach fork NUM
828 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
829 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
830 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
831 fork' command.
832
a80b95ba
TG
833* New native configurations
834
835x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
836
b8bfd3ed
JB
837x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
838
75a2d5e7
TT
839* New targets
840
c28c63d8 841Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 842x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 843x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 844S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 845
6de3146c
PA
846* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
847 (mingw32ce) debugging.
848
d5cbbe6e
JB
849* Removed commands
850
851catch load
852catch unload
853 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
854
75feb17d 855*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 856
af5ca30d
NH
857* New native configurations
858
859NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 860Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
861
862* New targets
863
864NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 865Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 866
7a404eba
PA
867* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
868
869 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
870 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
871 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
872 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
873
430ebac9
PA
874* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
875(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
876
fe6fbf8b 877* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 878is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
879
880* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
881including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
882and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 883
10665d76
JB
884* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
885accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
886more than one contiguous range of addresses.
887
7cc46491
DJ
888* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
889
d71340b8
DJ
890* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
891registers on PowerPC targets.
892
523c4513
DJ
893* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
894targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
895
a6b151f1
DJ
896* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
897commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
898
2d717e4f
DJ
899* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
900extended-remote mode.
901
24a836bd 902* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
903The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
904error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
905The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 906
d0c678e6
UW
907* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
908building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
909target architectures.
910
d64a946d
TJB
911* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
912Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
913now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
914stored in two consecutive float registers.
915
ee163bf5
VP
916* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
917breakpoints now.
918
b93b6ca7 919* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
920Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
921include:
b93b6ca7
JB
922 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
923 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
924 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
925 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
926 of an assignment
927 - Improved command completion in Ada
928 - Several bug fixes
929
d001be7a
DJ
930* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
931process.
932
a6b151f1
DJ
933* New commands
934
6d53d0af
JB
935set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
936show print frame-arguments
937 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
938 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
939
a6b151f1
DJ
940remote put
941remote get
942remote delete
943 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
944
945* New MI commands
946
947-target-file-put
948-target-file-get
949-target-file-delete
950 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
951
952* New remote packets
953
954vFile:open:
955vFile:close:
956vFile:pread:
957vFile:pwrite:
958vFile:unlink:
959 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 960
2d717e4f
DJ
961vAttach
962 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
963 mode.
964
965vRun
966 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
967
8d5f9c6f 968*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 969
19d378fc
MS
970* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
971bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
972Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
973
3a40aaa0
UW
974* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
975symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
976-Bsymbolic linker option.
977
a6ec25f2
BW
978* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
979recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
980is not supported.
981
6dd09645
JB
982* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
983frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
984
c9bb8148
DJ
985* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
98632-bit or 64-bit register values.
987
0d5de010
DJ
988* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
989
23181151
DJ
990* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
991target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
992a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
993
ea37ba09
DJ
994* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
995automatically displayed as character or string data.
996
997* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
998arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
999as strings.
e1f48ead 1000
123dc839
DJ
1001* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1002for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1003only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1004
05a4558a
DJ
1005* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1006iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1007
7c963485
PA
1008* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1009ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1010has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1011
b18be20d
DJ
1012* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1013
0ca420ce
UW
1014* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1015
31d99776
DJ
1016* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1017layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1018segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1019
a4642986
MR
1020* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1021immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1022
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1023* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1024"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1025packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1026where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1027Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1028
1029* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1030(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1031
1032* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1033according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1034
c9bb8148
DJ
1035* New commands
1036
23776285
MR
1037set remoteflow
1038show remoteflow
1039 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1040 when debugging using remote targets.
1041
c9bb8148
DJ
1042set mem inaccessible-by-default
1043show mem inaccessible-by-default
1044 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1045 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1046 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1047 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1048 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1049
1050set breakpoint auto-hw
1051show breakpoint auto-hw
1052 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1053 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1054 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1055 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1056 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1057 including "next" and "finish".
1058
0e420bd8
JB
1059catch exception
1060catch exception unhandled
1061 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1062
1063catch assert
1064 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1065
f822c95b
DJ
1066set sysroot
1067show sysroot
1068 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1069 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1070 an alias to "set sysroot".
1071
83cc5c53
UW
1072info spu
1073 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1074 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1075 architecture.
1076
bd372731
MK
1077* New native configurations
1078
1079OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1080
23181151
DJ
1081set tdesc filename
1082unset tdesc filename
1083show tdesc filename
1084 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1085 not query the target for its built-in description.
1086
c9bb8148
DJ
1087* New targets
1088
54fe9172 1089OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1090MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1091Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1092
6dd09645
JB
1093* New remote packets
1094
1095QPassSignals:
1096 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1097 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1098
23181151
DJ
1099qXfer:features:read:
1100 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1101 features.
6dd09645 1102
83cc5c53
UW
1103qXfer:spu:read:
1104qXfer:spu:write:
1105 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1106 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1107
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1108qXfer:libraries:read:
1109 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1110 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1111 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1112 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1113
483367ee
DJ
1114* Removed targets
1115
1116Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1117
d08950c4
UW
1118alpha*-*-osf1*
1119alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1120d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1121hppa*-*-hiux*
1122i[34567]86-ncr-*
1123i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1124i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1125i[34567]86-*-netware*
1126i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1127i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1128i[34567]86-*-sco*
1129i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1130i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1131i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1132i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1133i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1134i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1135i[34567]86-*-isc*
1136m68*-cisco*-*
1137m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1138mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1139rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1140sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1141
7ce59000
DJ
1142* Other removed features
1143
1144target abug
1145target cpu32bug
1146target est
1147target rom68k
1148
1149 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1150
ea35711c
DJ
1151target hms
1152target e7000
1153target sh3
1154target sh3e
1155
1156 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1157 H8/300.
1158
1159target ocd
1160
1161 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1162 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1163 interfaces.
1164
7ce59000
DJ
1165DWARF 1 support
1166
1167 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1168 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1169
54d61198
DJ
1170Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1171
1172 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1173 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1174 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1175 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1176
ea35711c
DJ
1177MIPS ".pdr" sections
1178
1179 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1180 in debugging information.
1181
1182Scheme support
1183
1184 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1185 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1186
1a69e1e4
DJ
1187set mips stack-arg-size
1188set mips saved-gpreg-size
1189
1190 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1191
6dd09645 1192*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1193
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1194* New targets
1195
1196Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1197Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1198
6aec2e11
DJ
1199* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1200(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1201running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1202
1203* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1204Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1205supported.
1206
17218d91
DJ
1207* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1208broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1209
9ebce043
DJ
1210* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1211stub provides the required support.
1212
7d3d3ece
DJ
1213* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1214longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1215
4f8253f3
JB
1216* New commands
1217
1218set substitute-path
1219unset substitute-path
1220show substitute-path
1221 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1222 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1223 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1224 between compilation and debugging.
1225
9fa66fd7
AS
1226set trace-commands
1227show trace-commands
1228 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1229 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1230 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1231
1f5befc1
DJ
1232* REMOVED features
1233
1234The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1235
2ec3381a
DJ
1236Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1237an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1238
3d00d119
DJ
1239The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1240
be2a5f71
DJ
1241* New remote packets
1242
1243qSupported:
1244 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1245 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1246 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1247 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1248 target.
1249
0876f84a
DJ
1250qXfer:auxv:read:
1251 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1252 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1253
9ebce043
DJ
1254qXfer:memory-map:read:
1255 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1256 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1257
1258vFlashErase:
1259vFlashWrite:
1260vFlashDone:
1261 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1262
0876f84a
DJ
1263* Removed remote packets
1264
1265qPart:auxv:read:
1266 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1267 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1268
e374b601 1269*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1270
96309189
MS
1271* New targets
1272
1273Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1274
1275Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1276
53e5f3cf
AS
1277* New commands
1278
1279init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1280 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1281
ac264b3b
MS
1282The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1283
1284checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1285
1286restart <n> Return the program state to a
1287 previously saved state.
1288
1289info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1290
1291delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1292
1293set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1294 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1295
1296info forks List forks of the user program that
1297 are available to be debugged.
1298
1299fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1300 forks of the user program that are
1301 available to be debugged.
1302
1303delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1304 that are available to be debugged (and
1305 kill the forked process).
1306
1307detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1308 that are available to be debugged (and
1309 allow the process to continue).
1310
3950dc3f
NS
1311* New architecture
1312
1313Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1314
0ea3f30e
DJ
1315* Improved Windows host support
1316
1317GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1318native console support, and remote communications using either
1319network sockets or serial ports.
1320
f79daebb
GM
1321* Improved Modula-2 language support
1322
1323GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1324basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1325pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1326printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1327written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1328GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1329
acab6ab2
MM
1330* REMOVED features
1331
1332The ARM rdi-share module.
1333
f4267320
DJ
1334The Netware NLM debug server.
1335
53e5f3cf 1336*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1337
e0ecbda1
MK
1338* New native configurations
1339
02a677ac 1340OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1341OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1342
d64a6579
KB
1343* New targets
1344
1345Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1346
b33a6190
AS
1347* New command line options
1348
1349--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1350--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1351 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1352--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1353 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1354 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1355 with the --command (-x) option.
1356
11dced61
AC
1357* Deprecated commands removed
1358
1359The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1360removed:
1361
1362 Command Replacement
1363 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1364 othernames set arm disassembler
1365 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1366 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1367 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1368 regs info registers
1369
6fe85783
MK
1370* New BSD user-level threads support
1371
1372It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1373library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1374configurations are:
1375
1376FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1377FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1378OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1379
1380Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1381are not yet supported.
1382
5260ca71
MS
1383* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1384(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1385
e84ecc99
AC
1386* REMOVED configurations and files
1387
1388VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1389Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1390National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1391
31e35378
JB
1392* New "set print array-indexes" command
1393
1394After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1395when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1396behavior.
1397
e85e5c83
MK
1398* VAX floating point support
1399
1400GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1401
d91e9901
AS
1402* User-defined command support
1403
1404In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1405to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1406section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1407
f2cb65ca
MC
1408*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1409
f47b1503
AS
1410* New command line option
1411
1412GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1413debugging.
1414
f2cb65ca
MC
1415* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1416
1417GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1418information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1419by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1420proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1421to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1422
d08c0230
AC
1423* Internationalization
1424
1425When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1426internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1427continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1428
117ea3cf
PH
1429* Ada
1430
1431Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1432implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1433into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1434
d08c0230
AC
1435* New native configurations
1436
1437GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1438
1439* Remote 'p' packet
1440
1441GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1442packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1443
1444* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1445
1446GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1447The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1448features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1449i386 application).
1450
1451GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1452compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1453continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1454configurations:
1455
1456hppa-*-hpux
1457ia64-*-aix
1458mips-*-irix*
1459*-*-lynx
1460mips-*-linux-gnu
1461sds protocol
1462xdr protocol
1463powerpc bdm protocol
1464
1465Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1466made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1467
1468* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1469
1470Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1471been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1472configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1473permanently REMOVED.
1474
1475h8300-*-*
1476mcore-*-*
1477mn10300-*-*
1478ns32k-*-*
1479sh64-*-*
1480v850-*-*
1481
ebb7c577
AC
1482*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1483
1484* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1485
1486When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1487heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1488been fixed.
1489
1490* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1491
1492When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1493fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1494IRIX long double values).
1495
1496* VAX and "next"
1497
1498A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1499command. This problem has been fixed.
1500
860660cb 1501*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1502
0dea2468
AC
1503* Fix for ``many threads''
1504
1505On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1506rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1507error message:
1508
1509 ptrace: No such process.
1510 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1511
1512This problem has been fixed.
1513
2c07db7a
AC
1514* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1515
1516Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1517GDB to dump core).
1518
c23968a2
JB
1519* New ``start'' command.
1520
1521This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1522
71009278
MK
1523* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1524
1525Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1526live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1527platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1528
1529FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1530FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1531NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1532NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1533NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1534OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1535OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1536OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1537OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1538
3c0b7db2
AC
1539* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1540
1541Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1542These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1543of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1544call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1545signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1546
73cc75f3
AC
1547Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1548features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1549include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1550
7243600a
BF
1551* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1552
6f606e1c
MK
1553* New native configurations
1554
97dc871c 1555GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1556OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1557OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1558OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1559OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1560NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1561OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1562
a1b461bf
AC
1563* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1564
1565GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1566The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1567including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1568migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1569compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1570work, was also included.
1571
1572GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1573module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1574
1575h8300-*-*
1576mcore-*-*
1577mn10300-*-*
1578ns32k-*-*
1579sh64-*-*
1580v850-*-*
1581xstormy16-*-*
1582
1583Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1584made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1585
3c7012f5
AC
1586* REMOVED configurations and files
1587
1588Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1589Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1590Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1591Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1592Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1593AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1594Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1595decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1596riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1597sonymips mips-sony-*
1598sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1599
e5fe55f7
AC
1600*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1601
1602* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1603
1604The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1605GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1606command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1607program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1608with GDB".
1609
1610* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1611
1612Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1613libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1614cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1615GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1616shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1617the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1618are created.
1619
1620Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1621
1622* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1623
1624The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1625non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1626compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1627
1628* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1629
1630Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1631wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1632
1633* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1634
1635The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1636permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1637systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1638
1639* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1640
1641Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1642has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1643
1644* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1645
1646GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1647its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1648panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1649
1650* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1651
1652When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1653by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1654not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1655
faae5abe 1656*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1657
9175c9a3
MC
1658* Removed --with-mmalloc
1659
1660Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1661conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1662
3cc87ec0
MK
1663* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1664
1665The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1666the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1667and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1668you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1669
f0424ef6
MK
1670* Revised SPARC target
1671
1672The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1673FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1674support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1675from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1676(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1677
59659be2
ILT
1678* New C++ demangler
1679
1680GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1681names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1682with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1683programs.
1684
9e08b29b
DJ
1685* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1686
1687GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1688arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1689encountered these.
1690
8dfe8985
DC
1691* C++ nested types and namespaces
1692
1693GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1694improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1695is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1696Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1697namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1698"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1699frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1700if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1701GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1702
cced5e27
MK
1703* New native configurations
1704
1705NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1706OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1707OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1708OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1709OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1710
b4b4b794
KI
1711* New debugging protocols
1712
1713M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1714
7989c619
AC
1715* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1716
1717The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1718and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1719tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1720
5994185b
AC
1721* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1722
1723Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1724been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1725configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1726permanently REMOVED.
1727
1728Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1729Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1730Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1731Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1732Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1733AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1734Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1735decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1736riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1737sonymips mips-sony-*
1738sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1739
0ddabb4c
AC
1740* REMOVED configurations and files
1741
1742SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1743SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1744Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1745Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1746H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1747HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1748HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1749HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1750PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1751386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1752Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1753 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1754 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1755SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1756SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1757Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1758Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1759
c7f1390e
DJ
1760*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1761
1fe43d45
AC
1762* Objective-C
1763
1764Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1765integrated into GDB.
1766
e6beb428
AC
1767* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1768
1769DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1770information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1771By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1772backtraces.
1773
1774The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1775have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1776DWARF 2 CFI support.
1777
1778* Hosted file I/O.
1779
1780GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1781file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1782remote protocol documentation for details.
1783
1784* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1785
1786All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1787architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1788to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1789ppc32 on ppc64).
1790
1791* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1792
1793GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1794per-thread variables.
1795
1796* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1797
1798GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1799GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1800
1801* Separate debug info.
1802
1803GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1804automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1805of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1806system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1807and optional debug files.
1808
1809* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1810
1811DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1812describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1813debugger.
1814
1815GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1816for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1817
1818* Java
1819
1820A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1821Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1822considered "useable".
1823
85f8f974
DJ
1824* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1825
1826The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1827commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1828kernel.
1829
0fac0b41
DJ
1830* GDB supports logging output to a file
1831
1832There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1833used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1834
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1835* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1836
1837The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1838disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1839command.
1840
e286caf2 1841* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1842
1843The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1844registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1845
d28f9cdf
DJ
1846* Profiling support
1847
1848A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1849be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1850session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1851"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1852data, for more informative profiling results.
1853
da0f9dcd
AC
1854* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1855
1856The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1857option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1858"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1859
1860Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1861removed.
1862
fb9b6b35
JJ
1863Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1864Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1865Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1866 in a subsequent -var-update.
1867
954a4db8
MK
1868* New native configurations.
1869
1870FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1871
6760f9e6
JB
1872* Multi-arched targets.
1873
b4263afa 1874HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1875Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1876
1b831c93
AC
1877* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1878
1879Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1880been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1881configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1882permanently REMOVED.
1883
8b0e5691 1884Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1885Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1886H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1887HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1888HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1889HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1890PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1891Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1892 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1893 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1894Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1895Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1896
5835abe7
NC
1897* REMOVED configurations and files
1898
1899V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1900Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1901IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1902i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1903i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1904i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1905HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1906 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1907 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1908Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1909Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1910Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1911OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1912I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1913
a094c6fb
AC
1914* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1915
1916The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1917the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1918context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1919address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1920The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1921
299ffc64 1922*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1923
46248966
AC
1924* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1925
1926When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1927`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1928in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1929library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1930shared libs like mad''.
1931
b9d14705 1932* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1933
b9d14705
DJ
1934Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1935the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1936arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1937powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1938
e0e9281e
JB
1939* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1940
1941GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1942and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1943they expand.
1944
dd73b9bb
AC
1945The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1946invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1947
1948The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1949macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1950
e0e9281e
JB
1951Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1952information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1953your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1954information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1955
2250ee0c
CV
1956* Multi-arched targets.
1957
6e3ba3b8
JT
1958DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1959DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1960NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1961National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1962Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1963Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1964
cd9bfe15 1965* New targets.
e33ce519 1966
456f8b9d
DB
1967Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1968
e33ce519 1969
da8ca43d
JT
1970* New native configurations
1971
1972Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1973SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1974MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1975UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1976
cd9bfe15
AC
1977* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1978
1979Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1980been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1981configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1982permanently REMOVED.
1983
92eb23c5 1984Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1985OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1986IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1987Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1988Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1989Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1990i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1991i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1992i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1993HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1994 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1995 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1996I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1997
db034ac5
AC
1998* OBSOLETE languages
1999
2000CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2001
cd9bfe15
AC
2002* REMOVED configurations and files
2003
2004AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2005A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2006AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2007AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2008AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2009
2010testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2011
20f01a46
DH
2012* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2013
2014This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2015commands. The default is 1024.
2016
a5941fbf
MK
2017* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2018
2019Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2020
89743e04
MS
2021* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2022
2023These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2024to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2025from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2026
9fb14e79
JB
2027* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2028
2029The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2030including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2031of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2032
2037aebb
AC
2033*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2034
2035* New targets.
2036
2037Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2038
2039* Bug fixes
2040
2041gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2042mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2043Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2044
2045gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2046dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2047Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2048
2049Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2050Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2051By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2052
2053i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2054avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2055By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2056
37057839 2057*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2058
1a703748
MS
2059* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2060
2061This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2062really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2063In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2064target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2065This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2066(notably embedded) targets.
2067
cefd4ef5
MS
2068* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2069
55241689
AC
2070This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2071process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2072GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2073hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2074
352ed7b4
MS
2075* New command line option
2076
2077GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2078
2079* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2080
2081There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2082command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2083a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2084be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2085open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2086issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2087a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2088it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2089GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2090is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2091
fe419ffc
RE
2092* Changes in ARM configurations.
2093
2094Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2095configuration is fully multi-arch.
2096
eb7cedd9
MK
2097* New native configurations
2098
fe419ffc 2099ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2100x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2101AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2102Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2103
c9f63e6b
CV
2104* New targets
2105
2106Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2107
9b4ff276
AC
2108* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2109
2110Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2111been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2112configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2113permanently REMOVED.
2114
2115AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2116A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2117AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2118AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2119AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2120
b4ceaee6 2121testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2122
e2caac18
AC
2123* REMOVED configurations and files
2124
2125TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2126WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2127PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2128PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2129PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2130Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2131Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2132 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2133SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2134Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2135Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2136ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2137Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2138
c2a727fa
TT
2139* Changes to command line processing
2140
2141The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2142for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2143
467d8519
TT
2144* Changes to key bindings
2145
2146There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2147
7072a954
AC
2148*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2149
2150Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2151
2152Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2153corrupted.
2154
2155Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2156
2157Numerous documentation fixes.
2158
2159Numerous testsuite fixes.
2160
34f47bc4 2161*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2162
2163* New native configurations
2164
2165Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2166x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2167MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2168MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2169ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2170s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2171
bf64bfd6
AC
2172* New targets
2173
def90278 2174Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2175CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2176UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2177
17e78a56 2178* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2179
2180x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2181Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2182Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2183 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2184TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2185WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2186Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2187PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2188PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2189PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2190SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2191Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2192ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2193Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2194
17e78a56
AC
2195stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2196kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2197
7fcca85b
AC
2198Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2199been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2200configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2201permanently REMOVED.
2202
a196c81c 2203* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2204
2205Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2206Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2207Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2208ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2209Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2210ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2211
6d6b80e5 2212* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2213
6d6b80e5 2214GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2215sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2216present.
2217
bf64bfd6
AC
2218* Other news:
2219
e23194cb
EZ
2220* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2221
2222* The MI enabled by default.
2223
2224The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2225revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2226engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2227using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2228which is now deprecated.
2229
2230* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2231
2232GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2233main features are supported:
2234
2235 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2236
2237 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2238 extension;
2239
2240 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2241
2242 - a Pascal expression parser.
2243
2244However, some important features are not yet supported.
2245
2246 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2247
2248 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2249
2250 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2251 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2252
2253 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2254
2255 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2256
2257* Changes in completion.
2258
2259Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2260to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2261users expect at the shell prompt.
2262
2263Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2264`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2265program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2266files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2267be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2268considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2269name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2270
2271`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2272
2273* New platform-independent commands:
2274
2275It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2276hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2277documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2278
2279* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2280
d7275149
MK
2281Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2282revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2283many threads as your system allows you to have.
2284
e23194cb
EZ
2285Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2286
d7275149
MK
2287Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2288multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2289
2290* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2291
2292Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2293
e23194cb
EZ
2294GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2295debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2296supported.)
2297
2298* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2299
2300Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2301breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2302implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2303put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2304and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2305registers.
2306
2307The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2308debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2309watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2310
2311* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2312
2313New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2314the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2315
2316New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2317display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2318IDT.
2319
2320New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2321from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2322New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2323a given linear address.
2324
2325GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2326program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2327which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2328
2329DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2330
6c56c069
EZ
2331It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2332
e23194cb
EZ
2333* Changes in documentation.
2334
2335All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2336Documentation License.
2337
2338Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2339manual.
2340
2341TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2342
2343Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2344manual.
2345
2346The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2347documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2348hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2349
5d6640b1
AC
2350* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2351
2352The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2353``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2354contents of this file.
2355
1a1d8446
AC
2356* gdba.el deleted
2357
2358GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2359
9debab2f 2360*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2361
c63ce875
EZ
2362* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2363
2364Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2365programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2366displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2367greater level of detail.
2368
2369* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2370
2371It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2372bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2373on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2374written.
2375
2376* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2377
2378The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2379necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2380machines ``out of the box''.
2381
2382The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2383possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2384signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2385would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2386interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2387
2388It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2389standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2390even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2391and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2392terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2393
2394The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2395enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2396also works.
2397
2398DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2399GDB.
2400
2401It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2402directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2403times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2404breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2405
ed9a39eb
JM
2406* New native configurations
2407
2408ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2409PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2410
7a292a7a
SS
2411* New targets
2412
96baa820 2413Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2414x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2415PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2416TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2417
085dd6e6
JM
2418* OBSOLETE configurations
2419
2420Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2421Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2422Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2423ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2424Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2425
9debab2f
AC
2426Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2427but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2428these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2429be permanently REMOVED.
2430
5330533d
SS
2431* Gould support removed
2432
2433Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2434
bc9e5bbf
AC
2435* New features for SVR4
2436
2437On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2438without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2439load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2440
2441* Many C++ enhancements
2442
2443C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2444in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2445
adf40b2e
JM
2446* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2447
2448A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2449sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2450with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2451``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2452
2453 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2454 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2455
43e526b9
JM
2456* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2457
2458A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2459expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2460instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2461
2462The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2463added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2464
96baa820
JM
2465* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2466
2467The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2468``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2469include ``set remote P-packet''.
2470
11cf8741
JM
2471* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2472
2473The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2474accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2475``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2476
7876dd43
DB
2477* ``apropos'' command added.
2478
2479The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2480documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2481try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2482
bc9e5bbf
AC
2483* New MI interface
2484
2485A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2486interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2487process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2488"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2489enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2490
2491 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2492
c906108c
SS
2493*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2494
2495* New native configurations
2496
2497HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2498HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2499M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2500
2501* New targets
2502
2503Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2504Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2505Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2506
2507* OBSOLETE configurations
2508
2509Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2510
2511Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2512but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2513these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2514be permanently REMOVED.
2515
2516* ANSI/ISO C
2517
2518As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2519buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2520containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2521use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2522available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2523configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2524information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2525already.
2526
2527* Readline 2.2
2528
2529GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2530
2531* set extension-language
2532
2533You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2534languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2535you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2536 set extension-language .c c++
2537The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2538and their associated languages.
2539
2540* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2541
2542When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2543you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2544PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2545
2546 set processor NAME
2547
2548sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2549following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2550
2551 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2552 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2553 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2554 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2555 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2556 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2557 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2558 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2559 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2560 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2561 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2562
2563At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2564special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2565registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2566only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2567
2568* HP-UX support
2569
2570Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2571more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2572library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2573support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2574for xdb and dbx commands.
2575
2576* Catchpoints
2577
2578HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2579generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2580to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2581
2582This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2583argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2584output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2585
2586* Debugging across forks
2587
2588On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2589in the inferior.
2590
2591* TUI
2592
2593HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2594it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2595configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2596
2597* GDB remote protocol additions
2598
2599A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2600Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2601fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2602allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2603
2604For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2605full 64-bit address. The command
2606
2607 set remoteaddresssize 32
2608
2609can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2610the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2611will be discarded.
2612
2613In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2614command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2615
2616 maint packet heythere
2617
2618sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2619disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2620time.
2621
2622The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2623target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2624downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2625
2626* Tracing can collect general expressions
2627
2628You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2629further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2630doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2631
2632* mask-address variable for Mips
2633
2634For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2635a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2636of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2637
2638* Higher serial baud rates
2639
2640GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2641230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2642to achieve all of these rates.)
2643
2644* i960 simulator
2645
2646The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2647builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2648
2649
2650*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2651
2652* New native configurations
2653
2654Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2655Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2656Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2657PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2658PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2659Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2660Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2661
2662* New targets
2663
2664Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2665Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2666Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2667Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2668MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2669MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2670MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2671Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2672Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2673Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2674NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2675
2676* New debugging protocols
2677
2678ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2679M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2680DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2681PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2682PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2683Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2684
2685* DWARF 2
2686
2687All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2688format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2689information.
2690
2691* Java frontend
2692
2693GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2694only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2695
2696* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2697
2698For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2699loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2700locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2701
2702* Live range splitting
2703
2704GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2705range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2706more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2707
2708* Hurd support
2709
2710GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2711updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2712
2713* ARM Thumb support
2714
2715GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2716instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2717instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2718accordingly.
2719
2720* MIPS16 support
2721
2722GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2723instruction set.
2724
2725* Overlay support
2726
2727GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2728linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2729will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2730control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2731additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2732in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2733
2734* info symbol
2735
2736The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2737the symbol at the specified address.
2738
2739* Trace support
2740
2741The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2742asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2743extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2744includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2745file tracepoint.c for more details.
2746
2747* MIPS simulator
2748
2749Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2750by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2751of most MIPS variants.
2752
2753* Sparc simulator
2754
2755Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2756by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2757Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2758
2759* set architecture
2760
2761For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2762basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2763architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2764the possible architectures.
2765
2766*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2767
2768* New native configurations
2769
2770Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2771M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2772PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2773PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2774PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2775RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2776
2777* New targets
2778
2779ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2780I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2781MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2782MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2783PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2784Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2785Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2786
2787* PowerPC simulator
2788
2789The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2790contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2791PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2792basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2793performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2794
2795* Solaris 2.5
2796
2797GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2798
2799* Windows 95/NT native
2800
2801GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2802To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2803which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2804Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2805ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2806
2807* dont-repeat command
2808
2809If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2810command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2811useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2812extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2813
2814* Send break instead of ^C
2815
2816The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2817rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2818GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2819
2820* Remote protocol timeout
2821
2822The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2823that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2824to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2825
2826* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2827
2828By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2829loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2830stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2831when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2832in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2833
2834Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2835/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2836automatically on hpux10.
2837
2838* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2839
2840Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2841
2842* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2843
2844When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2845may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2846the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2847every character. The default value is 1050.
2848
2849* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2850
2851If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2852a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2853replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2854details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2855remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2856to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2857
2858* Speedups for remote debugging
2859
2860GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2861the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2862and more efficient S-record downloading.
2863
2864* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2865
2866GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2867Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2868
2869*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2870
2871* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2872
2873The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2874can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2875
2876* Remote targets use caching
2877
2878Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2879remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2880it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2881debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2882off' turns the the data cache off.
2883
2884* Remote targets may have threads
2885
2886The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2887in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2888gdb/remote.c for details.
2889
2890* NetROM support
2891
2892If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2893support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2894acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2895write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2896support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2897another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2898sequence is something like
2899
2900 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2901 load <prog>
2902 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2903
2904* Macintosh host
2905
2906GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2907may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2908it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2909available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2910device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2911directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2912scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2913mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2914
2915* Autoconf
2916
2917GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2918but does simplify configuration and building.
2919
2920* hpux10
2921
2922GDB now supports hpux10.
2923
2924*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2925
2926* New native configurations
2927
2928x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2929x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2930NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2931Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2932
2933* New targets
2934
2935A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2936HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2937CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2938PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2939WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2940
2941* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2942
2943GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2944possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2945filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2946the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2947if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2948
2949* Arguments to user-defined commands
2950
2951User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2952Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2953trivial example:
2954define adder
2955 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2956
2957To execute the command use:
2958adder 1 2 3
2959
2960Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2961Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2962use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2963
2964* New `if' and `while' commands
2965
2966This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2967commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2968expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2969execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2970terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2971`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2972if the expression is zero.
2973
2974* Fortran source language mode
2975
2976GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2977Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2978variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2979with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2980Fortran compilers.
2981
2982* Better HPUX support
2983
2984Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2985running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2986processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2987for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2988that behavior do the following before running the program:
2989
2990 adb -w a.out
2991 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2992 control-d
2993
2994This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2995To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2996
2997 adb -w a.out
2998 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2999 control-d
3000
3001You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3002the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3003external linkage.
3004
3005GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3006HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3007
3008* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3009
3010You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3011commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3012current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3013"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3014associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3015configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3016
3017* New DOS host serial code
3018
3019This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3020no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3021a PC's serial port.
3022
3023*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3024
3025* New "complete" command
3026
3027This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3028were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3029
3030* Trailing space optional in prompt
3031
3032"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3033allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3034
3035* Breakpoint hit counts
3036
3037"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3038has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3039can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3040to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3041less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3042that breakpoint.
3043
3044* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3045
3046"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3047an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3048arrays actually contain only short strings.
3049
3050* Shared library breakpoints
3051
3052In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3053breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3054
3055* Hardware watchpoints
3056
3057There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3058targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3059
55241689 3060Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3061
3062* Annotations
3063
3064Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3065and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3066
3067* Improved Irix 5 support
3068
3069GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3070
3071* Improved HPPA support
3072
3073GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3074
3075* New native configurations
3076
3077Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3078HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3079Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3080RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3081
3082* New targets
3083
3084OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3085MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3086Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3087
3088* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3089
3090There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3091This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3092
3093* Fixes
3094
3095As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3096and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3097
3098*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3099
3100* Irix 5 is now supported
3101
3102* HPPA support
3103
3104GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3105to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3106GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3107of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3108can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3109
3110
3111*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3112
3113* User visible changes:
3114
3115* Remote Debugging
3116
3117The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3118target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3119debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3120integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3121debugging info for the mips target).
3122
3123* DEC Alpha native support
3124
3125GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3126debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3127work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3128Alpha-specific notes.
3129
3130* Preliminary thread implementation
3131
3132GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3133
3134* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3135
3136This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3137to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3138for details).
3139
3140* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3141
3142This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3143mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3144call methods, ...etc.
3145
3146*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3147
3148 * User visible changes:
3149
3150Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3151supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3152other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3153somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3154
3155Filename completion now works.
3156
3157When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3158arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3159addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3160
3161All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3162vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3163should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3164your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3165to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3166
3167 * DEC alpha support
3168
3169This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3170cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3171
3172
3173*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3174
3175 * Testsuite
3176
3177This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3178The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3179via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3180
3181 * C++ demangling
3182
3183'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3184emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3185Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3186disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3187use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3188
3189 * Simulators
3190
3191GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3192So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3193Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3194
3195 * New targets supported
3196
3197H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3198H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3199SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3200Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3201IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3202
3203Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3204version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3205GO32 memory extender.
3206
3207 * New remote protocols
3208
3209MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3210
3211 * New source languages supported
3212
3213This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3214used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3215into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3216
3217
3218*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3219
3220 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3221
3222GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3223version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3224University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3225compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3226format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3227(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3228
3229Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3230
3231 * Faster and better demangling
3232
3233We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3234demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3235character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3236only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3237This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3238increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3239symbol lookups.
3240
3241`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3242from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3243compiler does not actually implement.
3244
3245 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3246
3247In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3248inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3249recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3250very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3251The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3252circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3253fix.
3254
3255The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3256release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3257
3258 * Improved configure script
3259
3260The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3261you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3262host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3263done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3264
3265We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3266version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3267`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3268The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3269only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3270We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3271
3272 * Documentation improvements
3273
3274There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3275produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3276before submitting changes.
3277
3278The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3279M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3280`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3281you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3282a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3283
3284*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3285We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3286been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3287or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3288`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3289around this problem.
3290
3291 * New features
3292
3293GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3294the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3295`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3296the target program.
3297
3298The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3299how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3300
3301 * New native hosts supported
3302
3303HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3304386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3305
3306 * New targets supported
3307
3308AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3309
3310 * New file formats supported
3311
3312BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3313HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3314
3315 * Major bug fixes
3316
3317Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3318
3319We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3320printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3321
3322We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3323for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3324release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3325
3326You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3327will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3328
3329We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3330for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3331especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3332libraries.
3333
3334The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3335information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3336command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3337any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3338when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3339
3340 * Internal improvements
3341
3342GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3343debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3344
3345GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3346Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3347symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3348contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3349shared code that handles any of them.
3350
3351 * New command line options
3352
3353We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3354
3355 * Mmalloc licensing
3356
3357The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3358General Public License.
3359
3360*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3361
3362 * Host/native/target split
3363
3364GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3365hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3366target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3367local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3368ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3369
3370The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3371GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3372is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3373code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3374any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3375built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3376handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3377
3378GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3379It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3380plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3381
3382 * New hosts supported
3383
3384HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3385386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3386386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3387
3388 * New targets supported
3389
3390Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
339168030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3392
3393 * New native hosts supported
3394
3395386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3396 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3397386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3398
3399 * New file formats supported
3400
3401BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3402supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3403format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3404
3405 * New commands
3406
3407`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3408`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3409These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3410
3411`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3412
3413You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3414scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3415prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3416executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3417
3418 * C++ improvements
3419
3420We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3421info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3422symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3423
3424Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3425
3426 * Major bug fixes
3427
3428The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3429fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3430by the compiler.
3431
3432We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3433support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3434
3435John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3436slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3437that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3438purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3439the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3440mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3441
3442Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3443about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3444completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3445we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3446
3447 * AMD 29k support
3448
3449A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3450specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3451calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3452usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3453in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3454
3455We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3456Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3457of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3458resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3459
3460 * Remote interfaces
3461
3462We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3463with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3464message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3465This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3466needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3467breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3468each instruction being stepped through.
3469
3470The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3471registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3472
3473There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3474find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3475Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3476processor with a serial port.
3477
3478 * Configuration
3479
3480Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3481`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3482supported, and what files each one uses.
3483
3484 * Library changes
3485
3486There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3487disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3488Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3489disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3490
3491The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3492Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3493can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3494grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3495
3496 * Documentation
3497
3498The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3499reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3500as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3501encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3502system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3503bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3504
3505And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3506
3507
3508*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3509
3510 * Better support for C++ function names
3511
3512GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3513names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3514(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3515single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3516Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3517
3518GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3519the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3520You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3521lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3522for the list of formats.
3523
3524 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3525
3526Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3527C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3528directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3529can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3530usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3531about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3532this problem.)
3533
3534 * New 'maintenance' command
3535
3536All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3537the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3538can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3539
3540 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3541 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3542 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3543 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3544 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3545 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3546
3547The following commands are new:
3548
3549 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3550 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3551 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3552
3553 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3554
3555We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3556(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3557be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3558read after argv processing.
3559
3560 * New hosts supported
3561
3562Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3563
55241689 3564GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3565
3566We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3567is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3568for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3569masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3570fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3571It costs extra.
3572
3573 * New targets supported
3574
3575Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3576
3577 * More smarts about finding #include files
3578
3579GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3580all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3581greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3582especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3583the one that contains your sources.
3584
3585We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3586breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3587try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3588
3589 * Interesting infernals change
3590
3591GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3592section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3593target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3594stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3595
3596 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3597
3598There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3599 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3600 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3601
3602See the ChangeLog for details.
3603
3604*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3605
3606 * New machines supported (host and target)
3607
3608IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3609
3610SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3611
3612 * New malloc package
3613
3614GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3615Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3616capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3617This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3618pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3619more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3620
3621 * info proc
3622
3623The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3624'help info proc' for details.
3625
3626 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3627
3628The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3629Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3630possible.
3631
3632 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3633
3634Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3635support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3636conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3637environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3638that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3639in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3640
3641 * Cross byte order fixes
3642
3643Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3644targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3645
3646 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3647
3648If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3649system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3650`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3651program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3652called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3653Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3654and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3655the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3656option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3657starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3658
3659You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3660the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3661information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3662slower, but makes future operations faster.
3663
3664The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3665build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3666A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3667use is:
3668
3669 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3670
3671The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3672It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3673shared across multiple host platforms.
3674
3675 * longjmp() handling
3676
3677GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3678siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3679all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3680platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3681
3682 * Solaris 2.0
3683
3684Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3685this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3686reading symbols.
3687
3688 * Bug fixes
3689
3690As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3691People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3692crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3693
3694*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3695
3696 * New machines supported (host and target)
3697
3698SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3699 (except core files)
3700BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3701Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3702
3703 * New machines supported (target)
3704
3705AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3706
3707 * C++ support
3708
3709GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3710The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3711per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3712
3713GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3714`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3715extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3716good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3717will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3718released.
3719
3720 * New features for SVR4
3721
3722GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3723shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3724only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3725
3726The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3727on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3728it prints the address mappings of the process.
3729
3730If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3731bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3732
3733 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3734
3735Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3736now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3737skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3738make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3739same code linked statically.
3740
3741 * New Getopt
3742
3743GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3744version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3745continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3746Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3747added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3748future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3749
3750 * Bugs fixed
3751
3752The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3753Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3754See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3755
3756
3757*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3758
3759 * New machines supported (host and target)
3760
3761Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3762NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3763Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3764
3765 * Almost SCO Unix support
3766
3767We had hoped to support:
3768SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3769(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3770that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3771about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3772
3773 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3774
3775GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3776debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3777is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3778send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3779reqired (if any).
3780
3781 * New Readline
3782
3783GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3784is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3785required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3786
3787 * Bugs fixed
3788
3789The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3790Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3791See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3792
3793 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3794
3795GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3796supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3797symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3798
3799Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3800mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3801debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3802mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3803version 2.
3804
3805Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3806really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3807line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3808variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3809situation somewhat.
3810
3811When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3812However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3813methods.
3814
3815We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3816DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3817encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3818
3819
3820*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3821
3822 * Improved configuration
3823
3824Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3825Porting BFD is simpler.
3826
3827 * Stepping improved
3828
3829The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3830of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3831in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3832function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3833
3834 * Bug fixing
3835
3836Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3837
3838 * New host supported (not target)
3839
3840Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3841
3842
3843*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3844
3845 * Multiple source language support
3846
3847GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3848It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3849and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3850language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3851You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3852`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3853
3854 * GDB and Modula-2
3855
3856GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3857currently under development at the State University of New York at
3858Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3859continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3860
3861Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3862debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3863symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3864
3865There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3866in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3867
3868 * set write on/off
3869
3870GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3871a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3872the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3873by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3874effect immediately.
3875
3876 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3877
3878When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3879shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3880The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3881examining core files.
3882
3883 * set listsize
3884
3885You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3886The default is 10.
3887
3888 * New machines supported (host and target)
3889
3890SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3891Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3892Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3893
3894 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3895
3896IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3897
3898 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3899
3900AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3901AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3902Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3903
3904 * New remote interfaces
3905
3906AMD 29000 Adapt
3907AMD 29000 Minimon
3908
3909
3910*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3911
3912 * New Facilities
3913
3914Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3915
3916Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3917target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3918is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3919remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3920remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3921also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3922using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3923stub on the target system.
3924
3925New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3926
3927GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3928library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3929object file types such as a.out and coff.
3930
3931There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3932refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3933
3934
3935 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3936
3937All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3938by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3939
3940For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3941``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3942Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3943
3944What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3945print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3946will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3947all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3948
3949confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3950 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3951 it is already running. Default is ON.
3952
3953editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3954 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3955 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3956 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3957 Default is ON.
3958
3959history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3960 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3961 or the value of the environment variable
3962 GDBHISTFILE.
3963
3964history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3965 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3966 HISTSIZE.
3967
3968history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3969 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3970 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3971
3972history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3973 history expansion will be performed on
3974 command line input. The default is OFF.
3975
3976radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3977 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3978 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3979
3980height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3981 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3982 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3983 variable TERM.
3984
3985width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3986 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3987 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3988 variable TERM.
3989
3990Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3991``set width'' instead.
3992
3993print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3994 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3995 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3996 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3997
3998print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3999 is OFF.
4000
4001print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4002 "raw" form if off.
4003
4004print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4005 like instructions.
4006
4007print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4008
4009
4010 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4011
4012The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4013new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4014are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4015window.
4016
4017
4018 * Support for Shared Libraries
4019
4020GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4021Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4022before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4023happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4024At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4025from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4026shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4027It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4028
4029sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4030 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4031 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4032
4033info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4034
4035
4036 * Watchpoints
4037
4038A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4039expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4040tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4041quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4042problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4043more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4044
4045watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4046
4047info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4048
4049delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4050disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4051enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4052
4053
4054 * C++ multiple inheritance
4055
4056When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4057for C++ programs.
4058
4059 * C++ exception handling
4060
4061Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4062ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4063the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4064handler's context).
4065
4066catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4067 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4068 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4069
4070info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4071 current stack frame.
4072
4073
4074 * Minor command changes
4075
4076The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4077command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4078is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4079
4080The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4081at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4082frames without printing.
4083
4084 * New directory command
4085
4086'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4087The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4088about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4089with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4090find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4091
4092 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4093
4094For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4095for more details.
4096
4097GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4098two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4099Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4100where the program that you are debugging will run.