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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.1
5
6 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
7 files created on FreeBSD systems.
8
9 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
10
11 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
12 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
13 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
14
15 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
16 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
17
18 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
19 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
20 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
21 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
22 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
23
24 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
25 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
26 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
27 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
28
29 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
30 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
31
32 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
33 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
34 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
35
36 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
37 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
38 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
39
40 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
41 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
42 environment" command.
43
44 * Completion improvements
45
46 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
47 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
48 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
49 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
50 correctly:
51
52 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
53 (gdb) b function(int)
54
55 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
56 C++ anonymous namespaces:
57
58 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
59 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
60 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
61 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
62
63 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
64 completion support, that better understands what you're
65 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
66 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
67 setting a breakpoint.
68
69 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
70
71 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
72
73 * New command line options (gcore)
74
75 -a
76 Dump all memory mappings.
77
78 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
79
80 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
81 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
82 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
83
84 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
85
86 A::B::func()
87 B::func()
88
89 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
90 on both symbols.
91
92 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
93 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
94 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
95 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
96 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
97 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
98 a breakpoint from Python.
99
100 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
101
102 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
103 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
104 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
105
106 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
107
108 function[abi:cxx11](int)
109 ^^^^^^^^^^^
110
111 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
112 no tag, like:
113
114 (gdb) b function(int)
115
116 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
117
118 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
119
120 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
121
122 * Python Scripting
123
124 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
125 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
126 description of these.
127
128 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
129 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
130 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
131
132 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
133 manual for a further description of this feature.
134
135
136 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
137
138 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
139 specified initial working directory.
140
141 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
142 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
143
144 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
145 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
146
147 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
148 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
149
150 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
151 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
152 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
153 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
154 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
155
156 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
157 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
158 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
159
160 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
161 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
162 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
163 in the *stopped notification.
164
165 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
166 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
167
168 * New remote packets
169
170 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
171 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
172 the inferior when starting it.
173
174 QEnvironmentUnset
175 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
176 before starting the remote inferior.
177
178 QEnvironmentReset
179 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
180 user-set environment variables should be unset).
181
182 QStartupWithShell
183 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
184
185 QSetWorkingDir
186 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
187 working directory.
188
189 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
190 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
191
192 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
193 filter the tests to be run.
194
195 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
196 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
197
198 * New commands
199
200 set|show cwd
201 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
202
203 set|show compile-gcc
204 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
205 with the 'compile' commands.
206
207 set debug separate-debug-file
208 show debug separate-debug-file
209 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
210
211 set dump-excluded-mappings
212 show dump-excluded-mappings
213 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
214 dumped when generating a core file.
215
216 maint info selftests
217 List the registered selftests.
218
219 starti
220 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
221
222 set|show debug or1k
223 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
224
225 set|show print type nested-type-limit
226 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
227 type printer will show.
228
229 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
230 `o' for nexti.
231
232 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
233
234 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
235 'int'.
236
237 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
238 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
239 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
240 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
241
242 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
243 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
244 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
245 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
246 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
247 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
248
249 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
250 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
251 unless you tell it the variable's type:
252
253 (gdb) p var
254 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
255 (gdb) p (float) var
256 $3 = 3.14
257
258 * New native configurations
259
260 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
261 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
262
263 * New targets
264
265 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
266 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
267 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
268
269 * Removed targets and native configurations
270
271 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
272
273 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
274
275 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
276 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
277 available in future Intel CPUs.
278
279 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
280
281 * Python Scripting
282
283 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
284 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
285
286 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
287 instructions.
288
289 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
290
291 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
292
293 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
294 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
295 removed.
296
297 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
298
299 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
300 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
301
302 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
303
304 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
305 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
306 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
307 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
308 features.
309
310 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
311
312 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
313 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
314 debugger.
315
316 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
317
318 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
319 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
320
321 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
322
323 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
324
325 define mycommand
326 set $i = 0
327 while $i < $argc
328 eval "print $arg%d", $i
329 set $i = $i + 1
330 end
331 end
332
333 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
334
335 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
336 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
337
338 * New native configurations
339
340 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
341
342 * New targets
343
344 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
345 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
346
347 * Removed targets and native configurations
348
349 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
350 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
351
352 * New commands
353
354 flash-erase
355 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
356
357 maint print arc arc-instruction address
358 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
359
360 * New options
361
362 set disassembler-options
363 show disassembler-options
364 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
365 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
366 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
367 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
368 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
369
370 * New MI commands
371
372 -target-flash-erase
373 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
374 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
375
376 -file-list-shared-libraries
377 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
378 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
379
380 -catch-handlers
381 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
382 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
383
384 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
385
386 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
387
388 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
389 default. One must now explicitly configure with
390 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
391 option will be removed in a future release.
392
393 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
394 GDB connection.
395
396 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
397 memory backward from the given address. For example:
398
399 (gdb) bt
400 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
401 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
402 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
403 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
404 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
405 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
406 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
407 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
408 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
409
410 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
411 arrays of dynamic types.
412
413 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
414 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
415 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
416 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
417 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
418 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
419
420 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
421 descriptions.
422
423 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
424 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
425 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
426
427 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
428
429 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
430 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
431 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
432 signal received and code location.
433
434 For example:
435
436 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
437 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
438 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
439 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
440
441 * Rust language support.
442 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
443 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
444 Rust.
445
446 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
447
448 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
449 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
450 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
451 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
452 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
453 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
454 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
455 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
456 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
457 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
458 line.
459
460 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
461
462 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
463 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
464
465 * New commands
466
467 skip -file file
468 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
469 skip -function function
470 skip -rfunction regular-expression
471 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
472 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
473 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
474
475 maint info line-table REGEXP
476 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
477
478 maint selftest
479 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
480
481 new-ui INTERP TTY
482 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
483 using the TTY file for input/output.
484
485 * Python Scripting
486
487 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
488 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
489 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
490 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
491 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
492
493 signal-event EVENTID
494 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
495 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
496 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
497 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
498 signalling an event.
499
500 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
501 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
502 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
503
504 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
505 been removed:
506
507 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
508 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
509 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
510 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
511 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
512 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
513
514 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
515 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
516 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
517 bytecode into native code.
518
519 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
520 recording. For example:
521
522 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
523
524 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
525
526 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
527
528 * New targets
529
530 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
531
532 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
533
534 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
535
536 * Per-inferior thread numbers
537
538 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
539 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
540 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
541
542 (gdb) info threads
543 Id Target Id Frame
544 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
545 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
546 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
547 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
548
549 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
550 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
551 are no longer unique between inferiors.
552
553 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
554 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
555 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
556
557 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
558 IDs.
559
560 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
561 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
562
563 (gdb) thread 2.1
564 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
565 (gdb)
566
567 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
568 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
569 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
570 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
571 threads 2.*".
572
573 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
574 all threads.
575
576 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
577 the current thread.
578
579 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
580 current inferior.
581
582 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
583 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
584 example:
585
586 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
587 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
588
589 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
590
591 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
592
593 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
594 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
595
596 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
597 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
598 clients.
599
600 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
601 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
602 at the same time.
603
604 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
605 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
606 into native code.
607
608 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
609
610 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
611 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
612 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
613
614 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
615 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
616
617 * New commands
618
619 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
620 maint show target-non-stop
621 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
622 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
623 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
624
625 maint set bfd-sharing
626 maint show bfd-sharing
627 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
628
629 set debug bfd-cache
630 show debug bfd-cache
631 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
632
633 set debug fbsd-lwp
634 show debug fbsd-lwp
635 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
636
637 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
638 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
639 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
640
641 set remote thread-events
642 show remote thread-events
643 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
644
645 set ada print-signatures on|off
646 show ada print-signatures"
647 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
648 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
649
650 set max-value-size
651 show max-value-size
652 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
653 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
654 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
655
656 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
657 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
658 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
659 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
660 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
661 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
662
663 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
664 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
665
666 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
667 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
668
669 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
670
671 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
672 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
673 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
674 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
675 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
676 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
677
678 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
679 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
680
681 catch handlers
682 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
683
684 * New remote packets
685
686 exec stop reason
687 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
688
689 exec-events feature in qSupported
690 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
691 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
692 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
693 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
694
695 vCtrlC
696 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
697 non-stop mode.
698
699 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
700 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
701
702 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
703 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
704
705 QThreadEvents
706 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
707 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
708 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
709 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
710 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
711 stop for that same thread.
712
713 N stop reply
714 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
715 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
716 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
717
718 QCatchSyscalls
719 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
720 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
721
722 syscall_entry stop reason
723 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
724
725 syscall_return stop reason
726 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
727
728 * Extended-remote exec events
729
730 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
731 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
732 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
733
734 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
735 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
736 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
737
738 * Thread names in remote protocol
739
740 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
741 thread.
742
743 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
744
745 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
746 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
747 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
748 fork and exec catchpoints.
749
750 * Remote syscall events
751
752 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
753 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
754
755 set remote catch-syscall-packet
756 show remote catch-syscall-packet
757 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
758
759 * MI changes
760
761 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
762 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
763 left.
764
765 * Python Scripting
766
767 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
768 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
769 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
770 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
771 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
772 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
773
774 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
775
776 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
777 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
778 including advance SIMD instructions.
779
780 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
781
782 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
783 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
784 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
785 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
786 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
787 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
788 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
789
790 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
791 cpu information :
792 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
793
794 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
795 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
796 remote serial I/O.
797
798 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
799 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
800 and may include things like its command line arguments.
801
802 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
803 is now available on all platforms.
804
805 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
806 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
807 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
808 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
809 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
810 backward compatibility.
811
812 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
813 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
814 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
815 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
816
817 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
818 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
819 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
820 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
821 packets" below.
822
823 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
824
825 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
826
827 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
828 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
829 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
830 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
831 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
832 See "New remote packets" below.
833
834 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
835 available register groups, including target specific groups.
836
837 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
838 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
839 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
840 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
841 are ignored.
842
843 * Guile Scripting
844
845 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
846
847 * Python Scripting
848
849 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
850 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
851 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
852 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
853 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
854 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
855 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
856 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
857 "const" version of the value respectively.
858
859 * New commands
860
861 maint print symbol-cache
862 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
863
864 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
865 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
866
867 maint flush-symbol-cache
868 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
869
870 record btrace bts
871 record bts
872 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
873
874 compile print
875 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
876
877 tui enable
878 tui disable
879 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
880
881 show mpx bound
882 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
883 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
884
885 record btrace pt
886 record pt
887 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
888
889 maint info btrace
890 Print information about branch tracing internals.
891
892 maint btrace packet-history
893 Print the raw branch tracing data.
894
895 maint btrace clear-packet-history
896 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
897
898 maint btrace clear
899 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
900 anew by the next "record" command.
901
902 * New options
903
904 set debug dwarf-die
905 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
906 show debug dwarf-die
907 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
908
909 set debug dwarf-read
910 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
911 show debug dwarf-read
912 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
913
914 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
915 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
916 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
917 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
918
919 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
920 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
921 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
922 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
923
924 set debug dwarf-line
925 show debug dwarf-line
926 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
927
928 set max-completions
929 show max-completions
930 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
931 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
932 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
933 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
934
935 set history remove-duplicates
936 show history remove-duplicates
937 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
938
939 maint set symbol-cache-size
940 maint show symbol-cache-size
941 Control the size of the symbol cache.
942
943 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
944 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
945 BTS format.
946 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
947 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
948
949 set debug linux-namespaces
950 show debug linux-namespaces
951 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
952
953 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
954 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
955 Intel Processor Trace format.
956 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
957 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
958
959 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
960 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
961 packet history.
962
963 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
964 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
965
966 * Python/Guile scripting
967
968 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
969 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
970
971 * New remote packets
972
973 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
974 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
975
976 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
977 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
978
979 Qbtrace:pt
980 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
981 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
982 qSupported query.
983
984 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
985 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
986 Trace format.
987
988 swbreak stop reason
989 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
990 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
991 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
992 mode operation.
993
994 hwbreak stop reason
995 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
996 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
997
998 vFile:fstat:
999 Return information about files on the remote system.
1000
1001 qXfer:exec-file:read
1002 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1003 create a process running on the remote system.
1004
1005 vFile:setfs:
1006 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1007 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1008 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1009 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1010
1011 fork stop reason
1012 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1013
1014 vfork stop reason
1015 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1016
1017 vforkdone stop reason
1018 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1019 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1020
1021 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1022 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1023 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1024 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1025 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1026 whether these features are enabled.
1027
1028 * Extended-remote fork events
1029
1030 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1031 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1032 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1033 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1034
1035 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1036 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1037 the btrace record target.
1038 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1039
1040 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1041 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1042
1043 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1044 targets.
1045
1046 * Removed command line options
1047
1048 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1049
1050 * Removed targets and native configurations
1051
1052 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1053 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1054
1055 * New configure options
1056
1057 --with-intel-pt
1058 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1059 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1060
1061 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1062 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1063 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1064 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1065
1066 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1067
1068 * Python Scripting
1069
1070 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1071
1072 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1073
1074 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1075
1076 * Python Scripting
1077
1078 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1079 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1080 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1081 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1082 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1083 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1084 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1085 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1086 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1087 selecting a new file to debug.
1088 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1089 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1090
1091 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1092 inferior.
1093
1094 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1095 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1096 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1097 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1098
1099 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1100
1101 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1102 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1103 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1104 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1105
1106 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1107 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1108 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1109 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1110 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1111 interface with this new feature are:
1112
1113 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1114 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1115
1116 * New commands
1117
1118 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1119 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1120 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1121 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1122 as "maint demangler-warning".
1123
1124 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1125 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1126
1127 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1128 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1129 scripts.
1130
1131 maint print user-registers
1132 List all currently available "user" registers.
1133
1134 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1135 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1136 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1137
1138 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1139 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1140 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1141 provided.
1142
1143 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1144 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1145 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1146 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1147 at resume time.
1148
1149 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1150 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1151 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1152 switched threads meanwhile.
1153
1154 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1155
1156 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1157 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1158 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1159 is now the default mode.
1160
1161 * New options
1162
1163 set debug symbol-lookup
1164 show debug symbol-lookup
1165 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1166
1167 * MI changes
1168
1169 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1170 inferiors that have exited.
1171
1172 * New targets
1173
1174 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1175
1176 * Removed targets
1177
1178 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1179
1180 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1181 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1182 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1183 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1184 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1185
1186 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1187 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1188 its alias "share", instead.
1189
1190 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1191
1192 * New command line options
1193
1194 -D data-directory
1195 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1196
1197 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1198 as specified in ISO C99.
1199
1200 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1201 with or without disassembly.
1202
1203 * Guile scripting
1204
1205 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1206 available is determined at configure time.
1207 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1208 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1209
1210 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1211
1212 guile [code]
1213 gu [code]
1214 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1215
1216 guile-repl
1217 gr
1218 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1219
1220 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1221 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1222
1223 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1224 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1225
1226 * New options
1227
1228 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1229 show print symbol-loading
1230 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1231 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1232 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1233 becomes less useful.
1234
1235 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1236 show guile print-stack
1237 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1238
1239 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1240 show auto-load guile-scripts
1241 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1242
1243 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1244 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1245 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1246 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1247 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1248 usage of this option.
1249
1250 set auto-connect-native-target
1251
1252 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1253 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1254 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1255
1256 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1257 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1258 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1259
1260 maint set target-async (on|off)
1261 maint show target-async
1262 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1263 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1264 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1265 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1266
1267 set mi-async (on|off)
1268 show mi-async
1269 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1270 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1271
1272 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1273 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1274
1275 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1276 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1277 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1278 "set target-async on" command.
1279
1280 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1281
1282 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1283 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1284 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1285 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1286 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1287
1288 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1289 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1290 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1291
1292 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1293 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1294 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1295 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1296 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1297 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1298 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1299
1300 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1301 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1302
1303 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1304 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1305 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1306
1307 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1308 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1309 memory or registers.
1310
1311 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1312
1313 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1314 remote. It now works with all targets.
1315
1316 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1317 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1318 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1319 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1320 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1321 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1322 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1323 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1324 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1325 target-stack".
1326
1327 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1328 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1329 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1330
1331 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1332
1333 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1334 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1335 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1336
1337 * New remote packets
1338
1339 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1340 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1341 branch trace incrementally.
1342
1343 * Python Scripting
1344
1345 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1346 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1347 available.
1348 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1349 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1350 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1351 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1352 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1353
1354 * New targets
1355 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1356
1357 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1358 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1359 its alias "share", instead.
1360
1361 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1362 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1363 instead.
1364
1365 * MI changes
1366
1367 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1368 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1369 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1370 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1371 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1372 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1373 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1374 commands and CLI execution commands.
1375
1376 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1377
1378 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1379 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1380 recording has been added.
1381
1382 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1383
1384 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1385 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1386
1387 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1388 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1389 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1390 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1391 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1392 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1393 "void".
1394
1395 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1396
1397 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1398
1399 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1400 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1401 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1402 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1403
1404 (gdb) p $rax
1405 $1 = <not saved>
1406
1407 (gdb) info registers rax
1408 rax <not saved>
1409
1410 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1411 "*value not available*".
1412
1413 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1414 to binaries.
1415
1416 * Python scripting
1417
1418 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1419 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1420 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1421 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1422 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1423 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1424
1425 * New targets
1426
1427 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1428 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1429 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1430
1431 * Removed native configurations
1432
1433 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1434 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1435
1436 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1437 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1438 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1439 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1440 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1441 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1442 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1443
1444 * New commands:
1445 catch rethrow
1446 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1447 maint check-psymtabs
1448 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1449 maint check-symtabs
1450 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1451 maint expand-symtabs
1452 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1453
1454 show configuration
1455 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1456
1457 maint set|show per-command
1458 maint set|show per-command space
1459 maint set|show per-command time
1460 maint set|show per-command symtab
1461 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1462
1463 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1464 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1465 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1466 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1467 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1468
1469 info exceptions
1470 info exceptions REGEXP
1471 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1472 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1473 are listed.
1474
1475 * New options
1476
1477 set debug symfile off|on
1478 show debug symfile
1479 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1480 symbol tables within those files
1481
1482 set print raw frame-arguments
1483 show print raw frame-arguments
1484 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1485 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1486
1487 set remote trace-status-packet
1488 show remote trace-status-packet
1489 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1490
1491 set debug nios2
1492 show debug nios2
1493 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1494
1495 set range-stepping
1496 show range-stepping
1497 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1498
1499 set startup-with-shell
1500 show startup-with-shell
1501 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1502 directly.
1503
1504 set code-cache
1505 show code-cache
1506 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1507 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1508
1509 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1510 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1511 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1512 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1513 "set height 0".
1514
1515 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1516 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1517 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1518
1519 * New command-line options
1520 --configuration
1521 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1522
1523 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1524 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1525
1526 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1527 GDB command gcore.
1528
1529 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1530
1531 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1532 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1533
1534 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1535 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1536
1537 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1538 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1539 due to an uncaught signal.
1540
1541 * MI changes
1542
1543 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1544 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1545 command, which should contain "language-option".
1546
1547 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1548 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1549
1550 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1551 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1552 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1553 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1554 "undefined-command-error-code".
1555
1556 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1557 Trace Format now.
1558
1559 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1560
1561 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1562 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1563 are displayed.
1564
1565 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1566 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1567
1568 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1569 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1570 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1571
1572 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1573 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1574 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1575 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1576 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1577 "exec-run-start-option".
1578
1579 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1580 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1581
1582 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1583 the new "info exceptions" command.
1584
1585 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1586 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1587 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1588 ** ElinOS
1589 ** Wind River Linux
1590
1591 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1592 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1593 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1594 below.
1595
1596 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1597 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1598
1599 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1600 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1601 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1602
1603 * New remote packets
1604
1605 vCont;r
1606
1607 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1608 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1609 involvemement at each single-step.
1610
1611 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1612 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1613 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1614 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1615 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1616 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1617 speedup.
1618
1619 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1620
1621 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1622 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1623
1624 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1625 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1626 trace state variables.
1627
1628 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1629 target.
1630
1631 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1632 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1633
1634 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1635
1636 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1637 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1638 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1639 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1640
1641 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1642
1643 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1644 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1645 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1646 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1647
1648 set|show record full insn-number-max
1649 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1650 set|show record full memory-query
1651
1652 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1653 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1654 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1655 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1656 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1657
1658 record btrace
1659
1660 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1661 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1662
1663 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1664 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1665 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1666
1667 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1668 instruction granularity
1669
1670 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1671 function granularity
1672
1673 * New native configurations
1674
1675 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1676 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1677 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1678 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1679
1680 * New targets
1681
1682 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1683 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1684 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1685 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1686 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1687
1688 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1689 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1690 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1691 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1692 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1693 --data-directory command-line option.
1694
1695 * New command line options:
1696
1697 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1698 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1699
1700 * Removed command line options
1701
1702 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1703 Emacs.
1704
1705 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1706 type formatting.
1707
1708 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1709
1710 * Python scripting
1711
1712 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1713
1714 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1715
1716 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1717
1718 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1719
1720 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1721 of architecture in the Python API.
1722
1723 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1724 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1725
1726 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1727
1728 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1729 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1730 ** $_strlen(str)
1731 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1732
1733 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1734 given an argument.
1735
1736 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1737 default for GCC since November 2000.
1738
1739 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1740
1741 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1742 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1743
1744 * New configure options
1745
1746 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1747 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1748 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1749 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1750 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1751 options allow the user to override that default.
1752 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1753 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1754 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1755
1756 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1757
1758 catch signal
1759 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1760 conditions to be attached.
1761
1762 maint info bfds
1763 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1764
1765 python-interactive [command]
1766 pi [command]
1767 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1768 and print the result of expressions.
1769
1770 py [command]
1771 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1772
1773 enable type-printer [name]...
1774 disable type-printer [name]...
1775 Enable or disable type printers.
1776
1777 * Removed commands
1778
1779 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1780 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1781 instead.
1782
1783 * New options
1784
1785 set print type methods (on|off)
1786 show print type methods
1787 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1788 The default is to show them.
1789
1790 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1791 show print type typedefs
1792 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1793 The default is to show them.
1794
1795 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1796 show filename-display
1797 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1798 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1799
1800 set trace-buffer-size
1801 show trace-buffer-size
1802 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1803
1804 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1805 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1806 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1807
1808 set debug aarch64
1809 show debug aarch64
1810 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1811 The default is off.
1812
1813 set debug coff-pe-read
1814 show debug coff-pe-read
1815 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1816 exported symbols.
1817
1818 set debug mach-o
1819 show debug mach-o
1820 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1821 processing.
1822
1823 set debug notification
1824 show debug notification
1825 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1826
1827 * MI changes
1828
1829 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1830 "=cmd-param-changed".
1831 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1832 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1833 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1834 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1835 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1836 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1837 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1838 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1839 "=memory-changed".
1840 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1841 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1842 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1843 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1844 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1845 library load/unload events.
1846 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1847 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1848 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1849 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1850 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1851 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1852 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1853 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1854
1855 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1856 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1857 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1858 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1859
1860 * New remote packets
1861
1862 QTBuffer:size
1863 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1864 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1865
1866 Qbtrace:bts
1867 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1868 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1869 qSupported query.
1870
1871 Qbtrace:off
1872 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1873 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1874
1875 qXfer:btrace:read
1876 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1877 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1878
1879 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1880
1881 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1882 for more x32 ABI info.
1883
1884 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1885
1886 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1887
1888 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1889 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1890 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1891 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1892 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1893 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1894 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1895 "info os msg" lists message queues
1896 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1897
1898 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1899 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1900 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1901 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1902 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1903 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1904
1905 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1906 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1907 record/replay support.
1908
1909 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1910
1911 * Python scripting
1912
1913 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1914 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1915
1916 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1917
1918 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1919 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1920
1921 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1922
1923 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1924 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1925
1926 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1927 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1928 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1929 symbol's value.
1930
1931 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1932 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1933
1934 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1935 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1936 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1937
1938 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1939 object associated with a PC value.
1940
1941 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1942 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1943
1944 * Go language support.
1945 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1946 language.
1947
1948 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1949 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1950
1951 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1952 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1953
1954 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1955 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1956 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1957 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1958 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1959 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1960
1961 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1962 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1963 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1964 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1965
1966 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1967 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1968
1969 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1970 since December 2007.
1971
1972 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1973 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1974 command does. For instance:
1975
1976 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1977
1978 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1979 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1980 created, using the "condition" command.
1981
1982 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1983 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1984
1985 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1986
1987 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1988 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1989 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1990 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1991 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1992 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1993 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1994 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1995
1996 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1997 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1998 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1999 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2000 the .gdb_index section.
2001
2002 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2003
2004 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2005 target.
2006
2007 * MI changes
2008
2009 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2010
2011 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2012
2013 * New commands
2014
2015 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2016 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2017 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2018
2019 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2020 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2021
2022 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2023 several hits.
2024
2025 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2026 C++ and Java objects.
2027
2028 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2029 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2030 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2031 configured with '--with-python'.
2032
2033 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2034 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2035 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2036 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2037 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2038 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2039 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2040
2041 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2042 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2043 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2044 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2045
2046 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2047 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2048 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2049 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2050
2051 ** "set print symbol"
2052 "show print symbol"
2053 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2054 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2055 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2056
2057 * Deprecated commands
2058
2059 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2060 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2061
2062 * New targets
2063
2064 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2065 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2066
2067 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2068 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2069 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2070 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2071 evaluates to true.
2072
2073 * New options
2074
2075 set mips compression
2076 show mips compression
2077 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2078 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2079 mips16
2080 micromips
2081 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2082
2083 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2084 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2085 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2086 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2087 available mode.
2088 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2089 target.
2090
2091 set auto-load off
2092 Disable auto-loading globally.
2093
2094 show auto-load
2095 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2096
2097 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2098 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2099 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2100
2101 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2102 show auto-load python-scripts
2103 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2104
2105 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2106 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2107 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2108
2109 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2110 show auto-load libthread-db
2111 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2112
2113 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2114 show auto-load scripts-directory
2115 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2116 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2117 of the directories listed by this option.
2118 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2119
2120 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2121 show auto-load safe-path
2122 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2123 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2124
2125 set debug auto-load on|off
2126 show debug auto-load
2127 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2128
2129 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2130 show dprintf-style
2131 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2132 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2133 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2134 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2135
2136 set dprintf-function <expr>
2137 show dprintf-function
2138 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2139 show dprintf-channel
2140 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2141 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2142
2143 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2144 show disconnected-dprintf
2145 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2146 after GDB disconnects.
2147
2148 * New configure options
2149
2150 --with-auto-load-dir
2151 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2152 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2153 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2154 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2155 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2156
2157 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2158 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2159 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2160
2161 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2162 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2163 security feature.
2164
2165 * New remote packets
2166
2167 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2168
2169 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2170 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2171 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2172 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2173
2174 QProgramSignals:
2175
2176 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2177 program without GDB involvement.
2178
2179 * New command line options
2180
2181 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2182 before loading inferior.
2183 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2184 execute it before loading inferior.
2185
2186 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2187
2188 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2189 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2190 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2191 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2192 inferior changes.
2193
2194 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2195 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2196
2197 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2198 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2199 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2200 target hardware watchpoint.
2201
2202 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2203 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2204 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2205 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2206
2207 * Python scripting
2208
2209 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2210 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2211 existing one.
2212
2213 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2214 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2215 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2216 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2217 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2218 the stack trace.
2219
2220 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2221 Python API.
2222
2223 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2224 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2225 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2226 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2227 corresponding value.
2228
2229 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2230 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2231 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2232 on GDB start-up.
2233
2234 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2235 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2236 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2237 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2238
2239 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2240
2241 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2242 "gdb.breakpoints".
2243
2244 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2245 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2246 available in the CLI.
2247
2248 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2249 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2250 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2251 "some_type.items()".
2252
2253 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2254 new object file.
2255
2256 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2257 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2258 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2259 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2260 any anonymous fields.
2261
2262 * MI changes
2263
2264 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2265 "solib-event".
2266
2267 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2268 "=breakpoint-modified".
2269
2270 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2271
2272 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2273 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2274 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2275 lives.
2276
2277 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2278 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2279 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2280 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2281 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2282
2283 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2284 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2285
2286 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2287 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2288 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2289 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2290 use this option to specify where to find it.
2291
2292 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2293 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2294 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2295 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2296 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2297 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2298 section in the user manual for more details.
2299
2300 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2301 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2302 become available after that.
2303
2304 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2305
2306 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2307 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2308 gcc version 4.7.
2309
2310 * New commands
2311
2312 !SHELL COMMAND
2313 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2314 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2315
2316 * Changed commands
2317
2318 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2319 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2320 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2321
2322 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2323 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2324 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2325
2326 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2327 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2328 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2329 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2330 name starts with a hyphen.
2331
2332 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2333 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2334 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2335 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2336 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2337 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2338 number of bytes that will be collected.
2339
2340 tstart [NOTES]
2341 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2342 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2343 setting the variable trace-notes.
2344
2345 tstop [NOTES]
2346 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2347 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2348 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2349 trace-stop-notes.
2350
2351 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2352 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2353 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2354 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2355 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2356 is running.
2357
2358 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2359 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2360 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2361
2362 * New options
2363
2364 set debug dwarf2-read
2365 show debug dwarf2-read
2366 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2367 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2368
2369 set debug symtab-create
2370 show debug symtab-create
2371 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2372 creation. The default is off.
2373
2374 set extended-prompt
2375 show extended-prompt
2376 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2377 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2378 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2379 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2380 prompt is displayed.
2381
2382 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2383 show print entry-values
2384 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2385 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2386 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2387
2388 set debug entry-values
2389 show debug entry-values
2390 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2391 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2392
2393 set basenames-may-differ
2394 show basenames-may-differ
2395 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2396 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2397 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2398 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2399 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2400 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2401 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2402 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2403
2404 set trace-user
2405 show trace-user
2406 set trace-notes
2407 show trace-notes
2408 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2409 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2410 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2411 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2412
2413 set trace-stop-notes
2414 show trace-stop-notes
2415 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2416 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2417 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2418 started by someone else.
2419
2420 * New remote packets
2421
2422 QTEnable
2423
2424 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2425
2426 QTDisable
2427
2428 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2429
2430 QTNotes
2431
2432 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2433
2434 qTP
2435
2436 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2437
2438 qTMinFTPILen
2439
2440 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2441 be placed.
2442
2443 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2444 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2445
2446 * New targets
2447
2448 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2449
2450 * New Simulators
2451
2452 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2453
2454 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2455
2456 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2457
2458 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2459
2460 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2461 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2462 matches the given regular expression.
2463
2464 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2465
2466 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2467 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2468
2469 * New command line options
2470
2471 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2472 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2473
2474 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2475 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2476
2477 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2478 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2479 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2480
2481 * GDB now understands thread names.
2482
2483 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2484 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2485
2486 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2487 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2488
2489 * OpenCL C
2490 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2491 has been integrated into GDB.
2492
2493 * Python scripting
2494
2495 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2496 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2497 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2498
2499 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2500 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2501 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2502 and allows for more dynamic content.
2503
2504 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2505 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2506 have an is_valid method.
2507
2508 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2509 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2510 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2511
2512 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2513
2514 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2515 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2516 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2517 that function like so:
2518
2519 result = some_value (10,20)
2520
2521 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2522 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2523 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2524
2525 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2526 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2527 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2528 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2529 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2530
2531 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2532 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2533
2534 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2535
2536 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2537 selected thread.
2538
2539 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2540 holds the thread's name.
2541
2542 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2543 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2544 occurring in the process being debugged.
2545 The following events are currently supported:
2546 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2547 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2548 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2549
2550 * C++ Improvements:
2551
2552 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2553 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2554
2555 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2556
2557 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2558 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2559 was added to GCC 4.5.
2560
2561 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2562 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2563 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2564 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2565 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2566 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2567
2568 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2569 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2570 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2571 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2572 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2573
2574 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2575 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2576 execution to a label.
2577
2578 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2579 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2580 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2581 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2582
2583 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2584 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2585 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2586 of scope.
2587
2588 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2589
2590 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2591 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2592 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2593 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2594 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2595 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2596
2597 (gdb) info threads
2598 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2599
2600 While now you see this:
2601
2602 (gdb) info threads
2603 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2604
2605 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2606 dumps.
2607
2608 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2609 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2610 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2611 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2612
2613 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2614 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2615 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2616 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2617 section in the user manual for more details.
2618
2619 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2620
2621 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2622 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2623
2624 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2625
2626 * New native configurations
2627
2628 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2629
2630 * New targets:
2631
2632 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2633
2634 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2635 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2636 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2637 in the GDB user manual.
2638
2639 * Guile support was removed.
2640
2641 * New features in the GNU simulator
2642
2643 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2644
2645 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2646
2647 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2648
2649 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2650
2651 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2652 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2653 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2654 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2655 was always disabled for such configurations.
2656
2657 * C++ Improvements:
2658
2659 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2660
2661 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2662 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2663 For example:
2664 namespace A
2665 {
2666 class B { };
2667 void foo (B) { }
2668 }
2669 ...
2670 A::B b
2671 foo(b)
2672 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2673 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2674 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2675
2676 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2677
2678 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2679 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2680 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2681 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2682 entry.
2683 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2684 mentioned flavors of operators.
2685
2686 ** static const class members
2687
2688 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2689 class definition has been fixed.
2690
2691 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2692
2693 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2694 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2695 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2696 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2697 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2698 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2699
2700 * Static tracepoints
2701
2702 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2703 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2704 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2705 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2706 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2707 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2708 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2709 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2710 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2711 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2712 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2713 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2714 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2715 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2716 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2717 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2718 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2719 the "New remote packets" section below.
2720
2721 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2722
2723 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2724 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2725 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2726 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2727
2728 * Observer mode
2729
2730 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2731 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2732 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2733 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2734 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2735 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2736 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2737
2738 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2739 current thread.
2740
2741 * New remote packets
2742
2743 qGetTIBAddr
2744
2745 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2746
2747 qRelocInsn
2748
2749 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2750 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2751 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2752 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2753 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2754 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2755
2756 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2757
2758 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2759
2760 qTSTMat
2761
2762 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2763 program.
2764
2765 qXfer:statictrace:read
2766
2767 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2768 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2769 to gdb's qSupported query.
2770
2771 QAllow
2772
2773 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2774
2775 QTDPsrc
2776
2777 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2778 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2779
2780 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2781 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2782 a directory.
2783
2784 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2785
2786 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2787 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2788 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2789 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2790
2791 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2792 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2793 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2794 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2795 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2796 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2797 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2798
2799 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2800 for static tracepoints support.
2801
2802 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2803
2804 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2805 it understands register description.
2806
2807 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2808
2809 * X86 general purpose registers
2810
2811 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2812 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2813 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2814 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2815 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2816
2817 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2818 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2819 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2820 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2821 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2822 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2823
2824 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2825 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2826 in the specified file.
2827
2828 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2829 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2830 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2831 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2832 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2833 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2834 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2835 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2836 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2837 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2838
2839 * New commands
2840
2841 eval template, expressions...
2842 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2843 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2844
2845 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2846 show target-file-system-kind
2847 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2848 names.
2849
2850 save breakpoints <filename>
2851 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2852 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2853 definitions, use the `source' command.
2854
2855 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2856 is now deprecated.
2857
2858 info static-tracepoint-markers
2859 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2860
2861 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2862 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2863 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2864
2865 set observer on|off
2866 show observer
2867 Enable and disable observer mode.
2868
2869 set may-write-registers on|off
2870 set may-write-memory on|off
2871 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2872 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2873 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2874 set may-interrupt on|off
2875 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2876 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2877 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2878 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2879 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2880 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2881 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2882
2883 set record memory-query on|off
2884 show record memory-query
2885 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2886 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2887
2888 * Changed commands
2889
2890 disassemble
2891 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2892
2893 * Python scripting
2894
2895 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2896 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2897 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2898 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2899 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2900
2901 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2902 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2903 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2904 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2905
2906 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2907 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2908
2909 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2910
2911 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2912
2913 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2914
2915 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2916 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2917 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2918
2919 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2920 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2921 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2922 regular breakpoints.
2923
2924 * New targets
2925
2926 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2927
2928 * D language support.
2929 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2930 language.
2931
2932 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2933 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2934 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2935 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2936 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2937
2938 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2939 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2940 conditions of the form:
2941
2942 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2943
2944 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2945 interface mentioned above.
2946
2947 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2948
2949 * C++ Improvements
2950
2951 ** Namespace Support
2952
2953 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2954 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2955 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2956 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2957 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2958
2959 ** Bug Fixes
2960
2961 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2962 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2963 qualified name.
2964
2965 ** Cast Operators
2966
2967 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2968 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2969
2970 * New targets
2971
2972 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2973 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2974
2975 * New Simulators
2976
2977 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2978 Renesas RX rx
2979
2980 * Multi-program debugging.
2981
2982 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2983 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2984 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2985 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2986 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2987 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2988 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2989 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2990
2991 * New tracing features
2992
2993 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2994
2995 ** Trace state variables
2996
2997 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2998 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2999 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3000 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3001 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3002 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3003 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3004 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3005 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3006 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3007
3008 ** Fast tracepoints
3009
3010 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3011 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3012 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3013 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3014 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3015 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3016 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3017 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3018 the regular trace command.
3019
3020 ** Disconnected tracing
3021
3022 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3023 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3024 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3025 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3026 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3027
3028 ** Trace files
3029
3030 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3031 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3032 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3033 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3034 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3035 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3036 <name>".
3037
3038 ** Circular trace buffer
3039
3040 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3041 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3042 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3043 not be available for all target agents.
3044
3045 * Changed commands
3046
3047 disassemble
3048 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3049 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3050
3051 info variables
3052 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3053 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3054
3055 source
3056 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3057 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3058 support.
3059
3060 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3061 "set script-extension" (see below).
3062
3063 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3064
3065 record save [<FILENAME>]
3066 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3067 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3068
3069 record restore <FILENAME>
3070 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3071 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3072
3073 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3074 Add a new inferior.
3075
3076 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3077 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3078 inferior has loaded.
3079
3080 remove-inferior ID
3081 Remove an inferior.
3082
3083 maint info program-spaces
3084 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3085
3086 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3087 show remote interrupt-sequence
3088 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3089 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3090 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3091 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3092 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3093
3094 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3095 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3096 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3097 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3098 Linux kernel.
3099
3100 set remotebreak [on | off]
3101 show remotebreak
3102 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3103
3104 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3105 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3106
3107 info tvariables
3108 List trace state variables and their values.
3109
3110 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3111 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3112
3113 teval EXPR, ...
3114 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3115 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3116
3117 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3118 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3119
3120 * New expression syntax
3121
3122 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3123 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3124
3125 * New options
3126
3127 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3128 show follow-exec-mode
3129 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3130 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3131 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3132
3133 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3134 show default-collect
3135 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3136 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3137 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3138
3139 set disconnected-tracing
3140 show disconnected-tracing
3141 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3142 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3143 upon disconnection.
3144
3145 set circular-trace-buffer
3146 show circular-trace-buffer
3147 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3148 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3149 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3150 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3151
3152 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3153 show script-extension
3154 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3155 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3156 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3157 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3158 evaluation failed.
3159 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3160
3161 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3162 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3163 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3164 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3165 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3166 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3167 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3168 is on.
3169
3170 * Python API Improvements
3171
3172 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3173 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3174 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3175
3176 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3177 `is_base_class' attribute.
3178
3179 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3180
3181 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3182 evaluate an expression.
3183
3184 * New remote packets
3185
3186 QTDV
3187 Define a trace state variable.
3188
3189 qTV
3190 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3191
3192 QTDisconnected
3193 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3194
3195 QTBuffer:circular
3196 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3197
3198 qTfP, qTsP
3199 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3200
3201 * Bug fixes
3202
3203 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3204
3205 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3206 much more reliable. In particular:
3207 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3208 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3209 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3210 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3211 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3212 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3213 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3214 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3215 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3216 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3217 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3218 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3219 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3220 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3221 non-threaded programs.
3222
3223 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3224 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3225 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3226 executable program.
3227
3228 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3229
3230 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3231 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3232 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3233 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3234 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3235
3236 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3237 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3238 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3239 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3240 for tracepoint actions.
3241
3242 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3243 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3244 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3245
3246 * Process record and replay
3247
3248 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3249 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3250 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3251 execute commands.
3252
3253 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3254 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3255 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3256 reverse execution.
3257
3258 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3259 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3260 2.6.28 or later.
3261
3262 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3263 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3264 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3265 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3266 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3267 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3268 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3269 the installation instructions for more information.
3270
3271 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3272 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3273 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3274 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3275
3276 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3277 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3278
3279 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3280 now complete on file names.
3281
3282 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3283 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3284 For instance, consider:
3285
3286 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3287 # struct example variable;
3288 (gdb) p variable.
3289
3290 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3291 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3292
3293 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3294 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3295
3296 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3297 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3298 macros.
3299
3300 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3301 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3302 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3303
3304 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3305 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3306 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3307 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3308
3309 * New remote packets
3310
3311 qSearch:memory:
3312 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3313
3314 QStartNoAckMode
3315 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3316 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3317 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3318
3319 vKill
3320 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3321 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3322
3323 qXfer:osdata:read
3324 Obtains additional operating system information
3325
3326 qXfer:siginfo:read
3327 qXfer:siginfo:write
3328 Read or write additional signal information.
3329
3330 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3331
3332 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3333 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3334 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3335
3336 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3337 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3338
3339 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3340 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3341 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3342
3343 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3344 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3345
3346 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3347
3348 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3349
3350 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3351 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3352
3353 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3354 list of section offsets.
3355
3356 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3357 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3358 have also been fixed.
3359
3360 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3361 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3362 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3363
3364 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3365 example, given:
3366
3367 template<typename T> class C { };
3368 C<char const *> c;
3369
3370 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3371
3372 ptype C<char const *>
3373 ptype C<char const*>
3374 ptype C<const char *>
3375 ptype C<const char*>
3376
3377 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3378
3379 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3380 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3381
3382 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3383 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3384 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3385
3386 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3387 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3388
3389 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3390 gdbserver.
3391
3392 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3393 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3394
3395 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3396 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3397 as appropriate.
3398
3399 * Python scripting
3400
3401 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3402 available is determined at configure time.
3403
3404 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3405
3406 * Ada tasking support
3407
3408 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3409 been introduced:
3410
3411 info tasks
3412 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3413 info task N
3414 Print detailed information about task number N.
3415 task
3416 Print the task number of the current task.
3417 task N
3418 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3419
3420 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3421 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3422
3423 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3424
3425 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3426 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3427 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3428 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3429 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3430 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3431 below.
3432
3433 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3434 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3435 information.
3436
3437 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3438 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3439 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3440 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3441 more information.
3442
3443 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3444
3445 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3446 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3447 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3448 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3449 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3450
3451 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3452 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3453 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3454 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3455 --enable-targets configure option.
3456
3457 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3458
3459 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3460 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3461 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3462 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3463 section in the user manual for more information.
3464
3465 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3466 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3467 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3468 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3469 extensions on linux targets.
3470
3471 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3472
3473 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3474 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3475 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3476 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3477 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3478 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3479 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3480 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3481 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3482
3483 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3484 val1 [, val2, ...]
3485 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3486
3487 maint set python print-stack
3488 maint show python print-stack
3489 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3490
3491 python [CODE]
3492 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3493
3494 macro define
3495 macro list
3496 macro undef
3497 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3498 interactively.
3499
3500 info os processes
3501 Show operating system information about processes.
3502
3503 info inferiors
3504 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3505
3506 inferior NUM
3507 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3508
3509 detach inferior NUM
3510 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3511
3512 kill inferior NUM
3513 Kill inferior number NUM.
3514
3515 * New options
3516
3517 set spu stop-on-load
3518 show spu stop-on-load
3519 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3520
3521 set spu auto-flush-cache
3522 show spu auto-flush-cache
3523 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3524 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3525
3526 set sh calling-convention
3527 show sh calling-convention
3528 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3529
3530 set debug timestamp
3531 show debug timestamp
3532 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3533
3534 set disassemble-next-line
3535 show disassemble-next-line
3536 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3537 the debuggee stops.
3538
3539 set remote noack-packet
3540 show remote noack-packet
3541 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3542 under "New remote packets."
3543
3544 set remote query-attached-packet
3545 show remote query-attached-packet
3546 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3547
3548 set remote read-siginfo-object
3549 show remote read-siginfo-object
3550 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3551 packet.
3552
3553 set remote write-siginfo-object
3554 show remote write-siginfo-object
3555 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3556 packet.
3557
3558 set remote reverse-continue
3559 show remote reverse-continue
3560 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3561
3562 set remote reverse-step
3563 show remote reverse-step
3564 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3565
3566 set displaced-stepping
3567 show displaced-stepping
3568 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3569 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3570 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3571
3572 set debug displaced
3573 show debug displaced
3574 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3575
3576 maint set internal-error
3577 maint show internal-error
3578 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3579
3580 maint set internal-warning
3581 maint show internal-warning
3582 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3583
3584 set exec-wrapper
3585 show exec-wrapper
3586 unset exec-wrapper
3587 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3588
3589 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3590 show multiple-symbols
3591 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3592 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3593 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3594
3595 set breakpoint always-inserted
3596 show breakpoint always-inserted
3597 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3598 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3599 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3600
3601 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3602 show arm fallback-mode
3603 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3604 show arm force-mode
3605 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3606 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3607 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3608 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3609
3610 set disable-randomization
3611 show disable-randomization
3612 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3613 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3614 multiple debugging sessions.
3615
3616 set non-stop
3617 show non-stop
3618 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3619 a breakpoint.
3620
3621 set target-async
3622 show target-async
3623 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3624 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3625 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3626 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3627
3628 set target-wide-charset
3629 show target-wide-charset
3630 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3631 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3632
3633 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3634 show tcp auto-retry
3635 set tcp connect-timeout
3636 show tcp connect-timeout
3637 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3638 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3639 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3640
3641 set libthread-db-search-path
3642 show libthread-db-search-path
3643 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3644 libthread_db.
3645
3646 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3647 show schedule-multiple
3648 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3649 the current process.
3650
3651 set stack-cache
3652 show stack-cache
3653 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3654 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3655 affecting correctness.
3656
3657 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3658 show interactive-mode
3659 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3660 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3661 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3662 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3663 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3664
3665 * Removed commands
3666
3667 info forks
3668 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3669 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3670 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3671 command.
3672
3673 fork NUM
3674 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3675 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3676 alias for the `fork' command.
3677
3678 process PID
3679 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3680 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3681 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3682
3683 delete fork NUM
3684 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3685 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3686 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3687 fork' command.
3688
3689 detach fork NUM
3690 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3691 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3692 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3693 fork' command.
3694
3695 * New native configurations
3696
3697 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3698
3699 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3700
3701 * New targets
3702
3703 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3704 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3705 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3706 S+core 3 score-*-*
3707
3708 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3709 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3710
3711 * Removed commands
3712
3713 catch load
3714 catch unload
3715 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3716
3717 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3718
3719 * New native configurations
3720
3721 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3722 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3723
3724 * New targets
3725
3726 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3727 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3728
3729 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3730
3731 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3732 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3733 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3734 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3735
3736 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3737 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3738
3739 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3740 is resolved.
3741
3742 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3743 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3744 and in inlined functions.
3745
3746 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3747 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3748 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3749
3750 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3751
3752 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3753 registers on PowerPC targets.
3754
3755 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3756 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3757
3758 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3759 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3760
3761 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3762 extended-remote mode.
3763
3764 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3765 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3766 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3767 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3768
3769 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3770 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3771 target architectures.
3772
3773 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3774 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3775 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3776 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3777
3778 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3779 breakpoints now.
3780
3781 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3782 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3783 include:
3784 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3785 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3786 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3787 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3788 of an assignment
3789 - Improved command completion in Ada
3790 - Several bug fixes
3791
3792 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3793 process.
3794
3795 * New commands
3796
3797 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3798 show print frame-arguments
3799 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3800 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3801
3802 remote put
3803 remote get
3804 remote delete
3805 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3806
3807 * New MI commands
3808
3809 -target-file-put
3810 -target-file-get
3811 -target-file-delete
3812 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3813
3814 * New remote packets
3815
3816 vFile:open:
3817 vFile:close:
3818 vFile:pread:
3819 vFile:pwrite:
3820 vFile:unlink:
3821 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3822
3823 vAttach
3824 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3825 mode.
3826
3827 vRun
3828 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3829
3830 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3831
3832 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3833 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3834 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3835
3836 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3837 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3838 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3839
3840 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3841 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3842 is not supported.
3843
3844 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3845 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3846
3847 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3848 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3849
3850 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3851
3852 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3853 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3854 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3855
3856 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3857 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3858
3859 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3860 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3861 as strings.
3862
3863 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3864 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3865 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3866
3867 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3868 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3869
3870 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3871 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3872 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3873
3874 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3875
3876 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3877
3878 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3879 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3880 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3881
3882 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3883 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3884
3885 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3886 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3887 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3888 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3889 Windows and SymbianOS).
3890
3891 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3892 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3893
3894 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3895 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3896
3897 * New commands
3898
3899 set remoteflow
3900 show remoteflow
3901 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3902 when debugging using remote targets.
3903
3904 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3905 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3906 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3907 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3908 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3909 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3910 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3911
3912 set breakpoint auto-hw
3913 show breakpoint auto-hw
3914 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3915 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3916 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3917 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3918 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3919 including "next" and "finish".
3920
3921 catch exception
3922 catch exception unhandled
3923 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3924
3925 catch assert
3926 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3927
3928 set sysroot
3929 show sysroot
3930 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3931 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3932 an alias to "set sysroot".
3933
3934 info spu
3935 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3936 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3937 architecture.
3938
3939 * New native configurations
3940
3941 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3942
3943 set tdesc filename
3944 unset tdesc filename
3945 show tdesc filename
3946 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3947 not query the target for its built-in description.
3948
3949 * New targets
3950
3951 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3952 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3953 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3954
3955 * New remote packets
3956
3957 QPassSignals:
3958 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3959 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3960
3961 qXfer:features:read:
3962 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3963 features.
3964
3965 qXfer:spu:read:
3966 qXfer:spu:write:
3967 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3968 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3969
3970 qXfer:libraries:read:
3971 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3972 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3973 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3974 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3975
3976 * Removed targets
3977
3978 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3979
3980 alpha*-*-osf1*
3981 alpha*-*-osf2*
3982 d10v-*-*
3983 hppa*-*-hiux*
3984 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3985 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3986 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3987 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3988 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3989 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3990 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3991 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3992 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3993 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3994 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3995 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3996 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3997 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3998 m68*-cisco*-*
3999 m68*-tandem-*
4000 mips*-*-pe
4001 rs6000-*-lynxos*
4002 sh*-*-pe
4003
4004 * Other removed features
4005
4006 target abug
4007 target cpu32bug
4008 target est
4009 target rom68k
4010
4011 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4012
4013 target hms
4014 target e7000
4015 target sh3
4016 target sh3e
4017
4018 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4019 H8/300.
4020
4021 target ocd
4022
4023 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4024 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4025 interfaces.
4026
4027 DWARF 1 support
4028
4029 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4030 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4031
4032 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4033
4034 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4035 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4036 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4037 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4038
4039 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4040
4041 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4042 in debugging information.
4043
4044 Scheme support
4045
4046 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4047 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4048
4049 set mips stack-arg-size
4050 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4051
4052 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4053
4054 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4055
4056 * New targets
4057
4058 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4059 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4060
4061 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4062 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4063 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4064
4065 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4066 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4067 supported.
4068
4069 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4070 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4071
4072 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4073 stub provides the required support.
4074
4075 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4076 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4077
4078 * New commands
4079
4080 set substitute-path
4081 unset substitute-path
4082 show substitute-path
4083 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4084 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4085 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4086 between compilation and debugging.
4087
4088 set trace-commands
4089 show trace-commands
4090 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4091 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4092 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4093
4094 * REMOVED features
4095
4096 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4097
4098 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4099 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4100
4101 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4102
4103 * New remote packets
4104
4105 qSupported:
4106 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4107 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4108 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4109 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4110 target.
4111
4112 qXfer:auxv:read:
4113 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4114 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4115
4116 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4117 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4118 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4119
4120 vFlashErase:
4121 vFlashWrite:
4122 vFlashDone:
4123 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4124
4125 * Removed remote packets
4126
4127 qPart:auxv:read:
4128 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4129 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4130
4131 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4132
4133 * New targets
4134
4135 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4136
4137 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4138
4139 * New commands
4140
4141 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4142 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4143
4144 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4145
4146 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4147
4148 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4149 previously saved state.
4150
4151 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4152
4153 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4154
4155 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4156 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4157
4158 info forks List forks of the user program that
4159 are available to be debugged.
4160
4161 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4162 forks of the user program that are
4163 available to be debugged.
4164
4165 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4166 that are available to be debugged (and
4167 kill the forked process).
4168
4169 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4170 that are available to be debugged (and
4171 allow the process to continue).
4172
4173 * New architecture
4174
4175 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4176
4177 * Improved Windows host support
4178
4179 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4180 native console support, and remote communications using either
4181 network sockets or serial ports.
4182
4183 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4184
4185 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4186 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4187 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4188 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4189 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4190 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4191
4192 * REMOVED features
4193
4194 The ARM rdi-share module.
4195
4196 The Netware NLM debug server.
4197
4198 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4199
4200 * New native configurations
4201
4202 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4203 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4204
4205 * New targets
4206
4207 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4208
4209 * New command line options
4210
4211 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4212 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4213 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4214 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4215 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4216 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4217 with the --command (-x) option.
4218
4219 * Deprecated commands removed
4220
4221 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4222 removed:
4223
4224 Command Replacement
4225 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4226 othernames set arm disassembler
4227 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4228 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4229 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4230 regs info registers
4231
4232 * New BSD user-level threads support
4233
4234 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4235 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4236 configurations are:
4237
4238 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4239 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4240 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4241
4242 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4243 are not yet supported.
4244
4245 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4246 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4247
4248 * REMOVED configurations and files
4249
4250 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4251 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4252 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4253
4254 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4255
4256 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4257 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4258 behavior.
4259
4260 * VAX floating point support
4261
4262 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4263
4264 * User-defined command support
4265
4266 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4267 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4268 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4269
4270 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4271
4272 * New command line option
4273
4274 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4275 debugging.
4276
4277 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4278
4279 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4280 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4281 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4282 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4283 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4284
4285 * Internationalization
4286
4287 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4288 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4289 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4290
4291 * Ada
4292
4293 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4294 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4295 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4296
4297 * New native configurations
4298
4299 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4300
4301 * Remote 'p' packet
4302
4303 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4304 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4305
4306 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4307
4308 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4309 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4310 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4311 i386 application).
4312
4313 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4314 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4315 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4316 configurations:
4317
4318 hppa-*-hpux
4319 ia64-*-aix
4320 mips-*-irix*
4321 *-*-lynx
4322 mips-*-linux-gnu
4323 sds protocol
4324 xdr protocol
4325 powerpc bdm protocol
4326
4327 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4328 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4329
4330 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4331
4332 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4333 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4334 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4335 permanently REMOVED.
4336
4337 h8300-*-*
4338 mcore-*-*
4339 mn10300-*-*
4340 ns32k-*-*
4341 sh64-*-*
4342 v850-*-*
4343
4344 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4345
4346 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4347
4348 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4349 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4350 been fixed.
4351
4352 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4353
4354 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4355 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4356 IRIX long double values).
4357
4358 * VAX and "next"
4359
4360 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4361 command. This problem has been fixed.
4362
4363 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4364
4365 * Fix for ``many threads''
4366
4367 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4368 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4369 error message:
4370
4371 ptrace: No such process.
4372 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4373
4374 This problem has been fixed.
4375
4376 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4377
4378 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4379 GDB to dump core).
4380
4381 * New ``start'' command.
4382
4383 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4384
4385 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4386
4387 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4388 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4389 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4390
4391 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4392 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4393 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4394 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4395 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4396 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4397 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4398 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4399 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4400
4401 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4402
4403 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4404 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4405 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4406 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4407 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4408
4409 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4410 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4411 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4412
4413 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4414
4415 * New native configurations
4416
4417 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4418 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4419 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4420 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4421 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4422 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4423 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4424
4425 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4426
4427 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4428 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4429 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4430 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4431 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4432 work, was also included.
4433
4434 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4435 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4436
4437 h8300-*-*
4438 mcore-*-*
4439 mn10300-*-*
4440 ns32k-*-*
4441 sh64-*-*
4442 v850-*-*
4443 xstormy16-*-*
4444
4445 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4446 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4447
4448 * REMOVED configurations and files
4449
4450 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4451 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4452 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4453 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4454 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4455 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4456 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4457 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4458 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4459 sonymips mips-sony-*
4460 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4461
4462 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4463
4464 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4465
4466 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4467 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4468 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4469 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4470 with GDB".
4471
4472 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4473
4474 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4475 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4476 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4477 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4478 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4479 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4480 are created.
4481
4482 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4483
4484 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4485
4486 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4487 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4488 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4489
4490 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4491
4492 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4493 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4494
4495 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4496
4497 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4498 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4499 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4500
4501 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4502
4503 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4504 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4505
4506 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4507
4508 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4509 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4510 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4511
4512 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4513
4514 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4515 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4516 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4517
4518 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4519
4520 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4521
4522 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4523 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4524
4525 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4526
4527 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4528 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4529 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4530 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4531
4532 * Revised SPARC target
4533
4534 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4535 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4536 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4537 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4538 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4539
4540 * New C++ demangler
4541
4542 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4543 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4544 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4545 programs.
4546
4547 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4548
4549 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4550 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4551 encountered these.
4552
4553 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4554
4555 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4556 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4557 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4558 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4559 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4560 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4561 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4562 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4563 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4564
4565 * New native configurations
4566
4567 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4568 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4569 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4570 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4571 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4572
4573 * New debugging protocols
4574
4575 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4576
4577 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4578
4579 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4580 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4581 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4582
4583 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4584
4585 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4586 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4587 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4588 permanently REMOVED.
4589
4590 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4591 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4592 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4593 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4594 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4595 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4596 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4597 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4598 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4599 sonymips mips-sony-*
4600 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4601
4602 * REMOVED configurations and files
4603
4604 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4605 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4606 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4607 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4608 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4609 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4610 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4611 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4612 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4613 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4614 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4615 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4616 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4617 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4618 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4619 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4620 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4621
4622 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4623
4624 * Objective-C
4625
4626 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4627 integrated into GDB.
4628
4629 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4630
4631 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4632 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4633 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4634 backtraces.
4635
4636 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4637 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4638 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4639
4640 * Hosted file I/O.
4641
4642 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4643 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4644 remote protocol documentation for details.
4645
4646 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4647
4648 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4649 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4650 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4651 ppc32 on ppc64).
4652
4653 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4654
4655 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4656 per-thread variables.
4657
4658 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4659
4660 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4661 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4662
4663 * Separate debug info.
4664
4665 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4666 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4667 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4668 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4669 and optional debug files.
4670
4671 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4672
4673 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4674 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4675 debugger.
4676
4677 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4678 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4679
4680 * Java
4681
4682 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4683 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4684 considered "useable".
4685
4686 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4687
4688 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4689 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4690 kernel.
4691
4692 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4693
4694 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4695 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4696
4697 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4698
4699 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4700 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4701 command.
4702
4703 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4704
4705 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4706 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4707
4708 * Profiling support
4709
4710 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4711 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4712 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4713 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4714 data, for more informative profiling results.
4715
4716 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4717
4718 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4719 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4720 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4721
4722 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4723 removed.
4724
4725 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4726 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4727 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4728 in a subsequent -var-update.
4729
4730 * New native configurations.
4731
4732 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4733
4734 * Multi-arched targets.
4735
4736 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4737 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4738
4739 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4740
4741 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4742 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4743 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4744 permanently REMOVED.
4745
4746 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4747 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4748 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4749 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4750 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4751 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4752 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4753 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4754 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4755 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4756 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4757 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4758
4759 * REMOVED configurations and files
4760
4761 V850EA ISA
4762 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4763 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4764 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4765 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4766 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4767 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4768 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4769 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4770 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4771 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4772 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4773 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4774 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4775
4776 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4777
4778 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4779 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4780 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4781 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4782 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4783
4784 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4785
4786 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4787
4788 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4789 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4790 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4791 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4792 shared libs like mad''.
4793
4794 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4795
4796 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4797 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4798 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4799 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4800
4801 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4802
4803 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4804 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4805 they expand.
4806
4807 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4808 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4809
4810 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4811 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4812
4813 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4814 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4815 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4816 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4817
4818 * Multi-arched targets.
4819
4820 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4821 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4822 NEC V850 v850-*-*
4823 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4824 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4825 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4826
4827 * New targets.
4828
4829 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4830
4831
4832 * New native configurations
4833
4834 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4835 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4836 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4837 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4838
4839 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4840
4841 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4842 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4843 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4844 permanently REMOVED.
4845
4846 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4847 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4848 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4849 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4850 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4851 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4852 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4853 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4854 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4855 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4856 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4857 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4858 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4859
4860 * OBSOLETE languages
4861
4862 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4863
4864 * REMOVED configurations and files
4865
4866 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4867 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4868 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4869 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4870 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4871
4872 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4873
4874 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4875
4876 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4877 commands. The default is 1024.
4878
4879 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4880
4881 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4882
4883 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4884
4885 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4886 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4887 from a file into memory (restore).
4888
4889 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4890
4891 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4892 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4893 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4894
4895 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4896
4897 * New targets.
4898
4899 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4900
4901 * Bug fixes
4902
4903 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4904 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4905 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4906
4907 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4908 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4909 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4910
4911 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4912 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4913 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4914
4915 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4916 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4917 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4918
4919 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4920
4921 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4922
4923 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4924 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4925 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4926 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4927 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4928 (notably embedded) targets.
4929
4930 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4931
4932 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4933 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4934 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4935 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4936
4937 * New command line option
4938
4939 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4940
4941 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4942
4943 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4944 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4945 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4946 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4947 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4948 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4949 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4950 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4951 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4952 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4953
4954 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4955
4956 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4957 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4958
4959 * New native configurations
4960
4961 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4962 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4963 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4964 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4965
4966 * New targets
4967
4968 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4969
4970 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4971
4972 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4973 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4974 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4975 permanently REMOVED.
4976
4977 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4978 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4979 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4980 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4981 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4982
4983 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4984
4985 * REMOVED configurations and files
4986
4987 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4988 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4989 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4990 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4991 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4992 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4993 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4994 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4995 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4996 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4997 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4998 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4999 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5000
5001 * Changes to command line processing
5002
5003 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5004 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5005
5006 * Changes to key bindings
5007
5008 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5009
5010 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5011
5012 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5013
5014 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5015 corrupted.
5016
5017 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5018
5019 Numerous documentation fixes.
5020
5021 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5022
5023 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5024
5025 * New native configurations
5026
5027 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5028 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5029 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5030 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5031 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5032 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5033
5034 * New targets
5035
5036 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5037 CRIS cris-axis
5038 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5039
5040 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5041
5042 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5043 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5044 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5045 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5046 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5047 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5048 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5049 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5050 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5051 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5052 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5053 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5054 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5055 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5056
5057 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5058 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5059
5060 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5061 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5062 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5063 permanently REMOVED.
5064
5065 * REMOVED configurations and files
5066
5067 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5068 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5069 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5070 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5071 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5072 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5073
5074 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5075
5076 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5077 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5078 present.
5079
5080 * Other news:
5081
5082 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5083
5084 * The MI enabled by default.
5085
5086 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5087 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5088 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5089 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5090 which is now deprecated.
5091
5092 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5093
5094 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5095 main features are supported:
5096
5097 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5098
5099 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5100 extension;
5101
5102 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5103
5104 - a Pascal expression parser.
5105
5106 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5107
5108 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5109
5110 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5111
5112 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5113 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5114
5115 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5116
5117 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5118
5119 * Changes in completion.
5120
5121 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5122 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5123 users expect at the shell prompt.
5124
5125 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5126 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5127 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5128 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5129 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5130 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5131 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5132
5133 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5134
5135 * New platform-independent commands:
5136
5137 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5138 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5139 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5140
5141 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5142
5143 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5144 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5145 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5146
5147 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5148
5149 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5150 multi-threaded programs though.
5151
5152 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5153
5154 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5155
5156 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5157 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5158 supported.)
5159
5160 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5161
5162 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5163 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5164 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5165 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5166 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5167 registers.
5168
5169 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5170 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5171 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5172
5173 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5174
5175 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5176 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5177
5178 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5179 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5180 IDT.
5181
5182 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5183 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5184 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5185 a given linear address.
5186
5187 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5188 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5189 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5190
5191 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5192
5193 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5194
5195 * Changes in documentation.
5196
5197 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5198 Documentation License.
5199
5200 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5201 manual.
5202
5203 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5204
5205 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5206 manual.
5207
5208 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5209 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5210 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5211
5212 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5213
5214 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5215 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5216 contents of this file.
5217
5218 * gdba.el deleted
5219
5220 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5221
5222 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5223
5224 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5225
5226 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5227 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5228 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5229 greater level of detail.
5230
5231 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5232
5233 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5234 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5235 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5236 written.
5237
5238 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5239
5240 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5241 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5242 machines ``out of the box''.
5243
5244 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5245 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5246 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5247 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5248 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5249
5250 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5251 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5252 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5253 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5254 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5255
5256 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5257 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5258 also works.
5259
5260 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5261 GDB.
5262
5263 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5264 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5265 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5266 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5267
5268 * New native configurations
5269
5270 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5271 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5272
5273 * New targets
5274
5275 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5276 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5277 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5278 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5279
5280 * OBSOLETE configurations
5281
5282 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5283 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5284 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5285 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5286 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5287
5288 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5289 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5290 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5291 be permanently REMOVED.
5292
5293 * Gould support removed
5294
5295 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5296
5297 * New features for SVR4
5298
5299 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5300 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5301 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5302
5303 * Many C++ enhancements
5304
5305 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5306 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5307
5308 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5309
5310 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5311 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5312 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5313 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5314
5315 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5316 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5317
5318 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5319
5320 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5321 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5322 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5323
5324 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5325 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5326
5327 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5328
5329 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5330 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5331 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5332
5333 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5334
5335 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5336 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5337 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5338
5339 * ``apropos'' command added.
5340
5341 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5342 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5343 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5344
5345 * New MI interface
5346
5347 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5348 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5349 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5350 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5351 enabled by configuring with:
5352
5353 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5354
5355 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5356
5357 * New native configurations
5358
5359 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5360 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5361 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5362
5363 * New targets
5364
5365 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5366 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5367 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5368
5369 * OBSOLETE configurations
5370
5371 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5372
5373 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5374 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5375 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5376 be permanently REMOVED.
5377
5378 * ANSI/ISO C
5379
5380 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5381 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5382 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5383 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5384 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5385 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5386 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5387 already.
5388
5389 * Readline 2.2
5390
5391 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5392
5393 * set extension-language
5394
5395 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5396 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5397 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5398 set extension-language .c c++
5399 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5400 and their associated languages.
5401
5402 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5403
5404 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5405 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5406 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5407
5408 set processor NAME
5409
5410 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5411 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5412
5413 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5414 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5415 403 IBM PowerPC 403
5416 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5417 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5418 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5419 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5420 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5421 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5422 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5423 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5424
5425 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5426 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5427 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5428 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5429
5430 * HP-UX support
5431
5432 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5433 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5434 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5435 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5436 for xdb and dbx commands.
5437
5438 * Catchpoints
5439
5440 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5441 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5442 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5443
5444 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5445 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5446 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5447
5448 * Debugging across forks
5449
5450 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5451 in the inferior.
5452
5453 * TUI
5454
5455 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5456 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5457 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5458
5459 * GDB remote protocol additions
5460
5461 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5462 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5463 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5464 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5465
5466 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5467 full 64-bit address. The command
5468
5469 set remoteaddresssize 32
5470
5471 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5472 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5473 will be discarded.
5474
5475 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5476 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5477
5478 maint packet heythere
5479
5480 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5481 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5482 time.
5483
5484 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5485 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5486 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5487
5488 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5489
5490 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5491 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5492 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5493
5494 * mask-address variable for Mips
5495
5496 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5497 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5498 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5499
5500 * Higher serial baud rates
5501
5502 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5503 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5504 to achieve all of these rates.)
5505
5506 * i960 simulator
5507
5508 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5509 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5510
5511
5512 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5513
5514 * New native configurations
5515
5516 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5517 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5518 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5519 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5520 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5521 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5522 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5523
5524 * New targets
5525
5526 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5527 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5528 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5529 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5530 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5531 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5532 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5533 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5534 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5535 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5536 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5537
5538 * New debugging protocols
5539
5540 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5541 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5542 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5543 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5544 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5545 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5546
5547 * DWARF 2
5548
5549 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5550 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5551 information.
5552
5553 * Java frontend
5554
5555 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5556 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5557
5558 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5559
5560 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5561 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5562 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5563
5564 * Live range splitting
5565
5566 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5567 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5568 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5569
5570 * Hurd support
5571
5572 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5573 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5574
5575 * ARM Thumb support
5576
5577 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5578 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5579 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5580 accordingly.
5581
5582 * MIPS16 support
5583
5584 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5585 instruction set.
5586
5587 * Overlay support
5588
5589 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5590 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5591 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5592 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5593 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5594 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5595
5596 * info symbol
5597
5598 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5599 the symbol at the specified address.
5600
5601 * Trace support
5602
5603 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5604 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5605 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5606 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5607 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5608
5609 * MIPS simulator
5610
5611 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5612 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5613 of most MIPS variants.
5614
5615 * Sparc simulator
5616
5617 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5618 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5619 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5620
5621 * set architecture
5622
5623 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5624 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5625 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5626 the possible architectures.
5627
5628 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5629
5630 * New native configurations
5631
5632 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5633 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5634 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5635 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5636 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5637 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5638
5639 * New targets
5640
5641 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5642 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5643 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5644 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5645 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5646 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5647 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5648
5649 * PowerPC simulator
5650
5651 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5652 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5653 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5654 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5655 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5656
5657 * Solaris 2.5
5658
5659 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5660
5661 * Windows 95/NT native
5662
5663 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5664 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5665 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5666 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5667 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5668
5669 * dont-repeat command
5670
5671 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5672 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5673 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5674 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5675
5676 * Send break instead of ^C
5677
5678 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5679 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5680 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5681
5682 * Remote protocol timeout
5683
5684 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5685 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5686 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5687
5688 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5689
5690 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5691 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5692 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5693 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5694 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5695
5696 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5697 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5698 automatically on hpux10.
5699
5700 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5701
5702 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5703
5704 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5705
5706 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5707 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5708 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5709 every character. The default value is 1050.
5710
5711 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5712
5713 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5714 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5715 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5716 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5717 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5718 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5719
5720 * Speedups for remote debugging
5721
5722 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5723 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5724 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5725
5726 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5727
5728 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5729 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5730
5731 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5732
5733 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5734
5735 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5736 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5737
5738 * Remote targets use caching
5739
5740 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5741 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5742 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5743 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5744 off' turns the the data cache off.
5745
5746 * Remote targets may have threads
5747
5748 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5749 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5750 gdb/remote.c for details.
5751
5752 * NetROM support
5753
5754 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5755 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5756 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5757 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5758 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5759 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5760 sequence is something like
5761
5762 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5763 load <prog>
5764 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5765
5766 * Macintosh host
5767
5768 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5769 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5770 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5771 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5772 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5773 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5774 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5775 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5776
5777 * Autoconf
5778
5779 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5780 but does simplify configuration and building.
5781
5782 * hpux10
5783
5784 GDB now supports hpux10.
5785
5786 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5787
5788 * New native configurations
5789
5790 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5791 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5792 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5793 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5794
5795 * New targets
5796
5797 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5798 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5799 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5800 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5801 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5802
5803 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5804
5805 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5806 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5807 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5808 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5809 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5810
5811 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5812
5813 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5814 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5815 trivial example:
5816 define adder
5817 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5818
5819 To execute the command use:
5820 adder 1 2 3
5821
5822 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5823 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5824 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5825
5826 * New `if' and `while' commands
5827
5828 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5829 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5830 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5831 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5832 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5833 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5834 if the expression is zero.
5835
5836 * Fortran source language mode
5837
5838 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5839 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5840 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5841 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5842 Fortran compilers.
5843
5844 * Better HPUX support
5845
5846 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5847 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5848 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5849 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5850 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5851
5852 adb -w a.out
5853 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5854 control-d
5855
5856 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5857 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5858
5859 adb -w a.out
5860 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5861 control-d
5862
5863 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5864 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5865 external linkage.
5866
5867 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5868 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5869
5870 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5871
5872 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5873 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5874 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5875 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5876 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5877 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5878
5879 * New DOS host serial code
5880
5881 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5882 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5883 a PC's serial port.
5884
5885 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5886
5887 * New "complete" command
5888
5889 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5890 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5891
5892 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5893
5894 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5895 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5896
5897 * Breakpoint hit counts
5898
5899 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5900 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5901 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5902 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5903 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5904 that breakpoint.
5905
5906 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5907
5908 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5909 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5910 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5911
5912 * Shared library breakpoints
5913
5914 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5915 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5916
5917 * Hardware watchpoints
5918
5919 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5920 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5921
5922 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5923
5924 * Annotations
5925
5926 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5927 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5928
5929 * Improved Irix 5 support
5930
5931 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5932
5933 * Improved HPPA support
5934
5935 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5936
5937 * New native configurations
5938
5939 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5940 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5941 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5942 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5943
5944 * New targets
5945
5946 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5947 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5948 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5949
5950 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5951
5952 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5953 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5954
5955 * Fixes
5956
5957 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5958 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5959
5960 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5961
5962 * Irix 5 is now supported
5963
5964 * HPPA support
5965
5966 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5967 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5968 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5969 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5970 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5971
5972
5973 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5974
5975 * User visible changes:
5976
5977 * Remote Debugging
5978
5979 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5980 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5981 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5982 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5983 debugging info for the mips target).
5984
5985 * DEC Alpha native support
5986
5987 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5988 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5989 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5990 Alpha-specific notes.
5991
5992 * Preliminary thread implementation
5993
5994 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5995
5996 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5997
5998 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5999 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6000 for details).
6001
6002 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6003
6004 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6005 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6006 call methods, ...etc.
6007
6008 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6009
6010 * User visible changes:
6011
6012 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6013 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6014 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6015 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6016
6017 Filename completion now works.
6018
6019 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6020 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6021 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6022
6023 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6024 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6025 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6026 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6027 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6028
6029 * DEC alpha support
6030
6031 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6032 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6033
6034
6035 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6036
6037 * Testsuite
6038
6039 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6040 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6041 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6042
6043 * C++ demangling
6044
6045 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6046 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6047 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6048 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6049 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6050
6051 * Simulators
6052
6053 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6054 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6055 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6056
6057 * New targets supported
6058
6059 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6060 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6061 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6062 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6063 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6064
6065 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6066 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6067 GO32 memory extender.
6068
6069 * New remote protocols
6070
6071 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6072
6073 * New source languages supported
6074
6075 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6076 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6077 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6078
6079
6080 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6081
6082 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6083
6084 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6085 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6086 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6087 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6088 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6089 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6090
6091 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6092
6093 * Faster and better demangling
6094
6095 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6096 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6097 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6098 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6099 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6100 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6101 symbol lookups.
6102
6103 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6104 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6105 compiler does not actually implement.
6106
6107 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6108
6109 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6110 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6111 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6112 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6113 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6114 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6115 fix.
6116
6117 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6118 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6119
6120 * Improved configure script
6121
6122 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6123 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6124 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6125 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6126
6127 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6128 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6129 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6130 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6131 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6132 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6133
6134 * Documentation improvements
6135
6136 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6137 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6138 before submitting changes.
6139
6140 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6141 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6142 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6143 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6144 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6145
6146 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6147 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6148 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6149 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6150 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6151 around this problem.
6152
6153 * New features
6154
6155 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6156 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6157 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6158 the target program.
6159
6160 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6161 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6162
6163 * New native hosts supported
6164
6165 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6166 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6167
6168 * New targets supported
6169
6170 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6171
6172 * New file formats supported
6173
6174 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6175 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6176
6177 * Major bug fixes
6178
6179 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6180
6181 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6182 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6183
6184 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6185 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6186 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6187
6188 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6189 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6190
6191 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6192 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6193 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6194 libraries.
6195
6196 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6197 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6198 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6199 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6200 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6201
6202 * Internal improvements
6203
6204 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6205 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6206
6207 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6208 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6209 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6210 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6211 shared code that handles any of them.
6212
6213 * New command line options
6214
6215 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6216
6217 * Mmalloc licensing
6218
6219 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6220 General Public License.
6221
6222 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6223
6224 * Host/native/target split
6225
6226 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6227 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6228 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6229 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6230 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6231
6232 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6233 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6234 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6235 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6236 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6237 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6238 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6239
6240 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6241 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6242 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6243
6244 * New hosts supported
6245
6246 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6247 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6248 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6249
6250 * New targets supported
6251
6252 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6253 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6254
6255 * New native hosts supported
6256
6257 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6258 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6259 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6260
6261 * New file formats supported
6262
6263 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6264 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6265 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6266
6267 * New commands
6268
6269 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6270 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6271 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6272
6273 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6274
6275 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6276 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6277 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6278 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6279
6280 * C++ improvements
6281
6282 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6283 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6284 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6285
6286 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6287
6288 * Major bug fixes
6289
6290 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6291 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6292 by the compiler.
6293
6294 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6295 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6296
6297 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6298 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6299 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6300 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6301 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6302 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6303
6304 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6305 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6306 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6307 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6308
6309 * AMD 29k support
6310
6311 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6312 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6313 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6314 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6315 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6316
6317 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6318 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6319 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6320 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6321
6322 * Remote interfaces
6323
6324 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6325 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6326 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6327 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6328 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6329 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6330 each instruction being stepped through.
6331
6332 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6333 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6334
6335 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6336 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6337 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6338 processor with a serial port.
6339
6340 * Configuration
6341
6342 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6343 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6344 supported, and what files each one uses.
6345
6346 * Library changes
6347
6348 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6349 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6350 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6351 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6352
6353 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6354 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6355 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6356 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6357
6358 * Documentation
6359
6360 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6361 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6362 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6363 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6364 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6365 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6366
6367 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6368
6369
6370 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6371
6372 * Better support for C++ function names
6373
6374 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6375 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6376 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6377 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6378 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6379
6380 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6381 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6382 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6383 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6384 for the list of formats.
6385
6386 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6387
6388 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6389 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6390 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6391 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6392 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6393 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6394 this problem.)
6395
6396 * New 'maintenance' command
6397
6398 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6399 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6400 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6401
6402 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6403 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6404 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6405 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6406 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6407 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6408
6409 The following commands are new:
6410
6411 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6412 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6413 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6414
6415 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6416
6417 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6418 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6419 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6420 read after argv processing.
6421
6422 * New hosts supported
6423
6424 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6425
6426 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6427
6428 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6429 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6430 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6431 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6432 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6433 It costs extra.
6434
6435 * New targets supported
6436
6437 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6438
6439 * More smarts about finding #include files
6440
6441 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6442 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6443 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6444 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6445 the one that contains your sources.
6446
6447 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6448 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6449 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6450
6451 * Interesting infernals change
6452
6453 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6454 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6455 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6456 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6457
6458 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6459
6460 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6461 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6462 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6463
6464 See the ChangeLog for details.
6465
6466 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6467
6468 * New machines supported (host and target)
6469
6470 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6471
6472 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6473
6474 * New malloc package
6475
6476 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6477 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6478 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6479 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6480 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6481 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6482
6483 * info proc
6484
6485 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6486 'help info proc' for details.
6487
6488 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6489
6490 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6491 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6492 possible.
6493
6494 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6495
6496 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6497 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6498 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6499 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6500 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6501 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6502
6503 * Cross byte order fixes
6504
6505 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6506 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6507
6508 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6509
6510 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6511 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6512 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6513 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6514 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6515 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6516 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6517 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6518 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6519 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6520
6521 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6522 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6523 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6524 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6525
6526 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6527 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6528 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6529 use is:
6530
6531 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6532
6533 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6534 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6535 shared across multiple host platforms.
6536
6537 * longjmp() handling
6538
6539 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6540 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6541 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6542 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6543
6544 * Solaris 2.0
6545
6546 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6547 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6548 reading symbols.
6549
6550 * Bug fixes
6551
6552 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6553 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6554 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6555
6556 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6557
6558 * New machines supported (host and target)
6559
6560 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6561 (except core files)
6562 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6563 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6564
6565 * New machines supported (target)
6566
6567 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6568
6569 * C++ support
6570
6571 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6572 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6573 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6574
6575 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6576 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6577 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6578 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6579 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6580 released.
6581
6582 * New features for SVR4
6583
6584 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6585 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6586 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6587
6588 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6589 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6590 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6591
6592 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6593 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6594
6595 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6596
6597 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6598 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6599 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6600 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6601 same code linked statically.
6602
6603 * New Getopt
6604
6605 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6606 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6607 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6608 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6609 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6610 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6611
6612 * Bugs fixed
6613
6614 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6615 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6616 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6617
6618
6619 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6620
6621 * New machines supported (host and target)
6622
6623 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6624 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6625 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6626
6627 * Almost SCO Unix support
6628
6629 We had hoped to support:
6630 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6631 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6632 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6633 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6634
6635 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6636
6637 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6638 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6639 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6640 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6641 reqired (if any).
6642
6643 * New Readline
6644
6645 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6646 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6647 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6648
6649 * Bugs fixed
6650
6651 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6652 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6653 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6654
6655 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6656
6657 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6658 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6659 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6660
6661 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6662 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6663 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6664 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6665 version 2.
6666
6667 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6668 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6669 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6670 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6671 situation somewhat.
6672
6673 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6674 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6675 methods.
6676
6677 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6678 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6679 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6680
6681
6682 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6683
6684 * Improved configuration
6685
6686 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6687 Porting BFD is simpler.
6688
6689 * Stepping improved
6690
6691 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6692 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6693 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6694 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6695
6696 * Bug fixing
6697
6698 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6699
6700 * New host supported (not target)
6701
6702 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6703
6704
6705 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6706
6707 * Multiple source language support
6708
6709 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6710 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6711 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6712 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6713 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6714 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6715
6716 * GDB and Modula-2
6717
6718 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6719 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6720 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6721 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6722
6723 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6724 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6725 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6726
6727 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6728 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6729
6730 * set write on/off
6731
6732 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6733 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6734 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6735 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6736 effect immediately.
6737
6738 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6739
6740 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6741 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6742 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6743 examining core files.
6744
6745 * set listsize
6746
6747 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6748 The default is 10.
6749
6750 * New machines supported (host and target)
6751
6752 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6753 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6754 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6755
6756 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6757
6758 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6759
6760 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6761
6762 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6763 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6764 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6765
6766 * New remote interfaces
6767
6768 AMD 29000 Adapt
6769 AMD 29000 Minimon
6770
6771
6772 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6773
6774 * New Facilities
6775
6776 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6777
6778 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6779 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6780 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6781 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6782 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6783 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6784 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6785 stub on the target system.
6786
6787 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6788
6789 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6790 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6791 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6792
6793 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6794 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6795
6796
6797 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6798
6799 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6800 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6801
6802 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6803 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6804 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6805
6806 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6807 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6808 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6809 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6810
6811 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6812 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6813 it is already running. Default is ON.
6814
6815 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6816 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6817 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6818 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6819 Default is ON.
6820
6821 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6822 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6823 or the value of the environment variable
6824 GDBHISTFILE.
6825
6826 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6827 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6828 HISTSIZE.
6829
6830 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6831 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6832 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6833
6834 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6835 history expansion will be performed on
6836 command line input. The default is OFF.
6837
6838 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6839 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6840 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6841
6842 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6843 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6844 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6845 variable TERM.
6846
6847 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6848 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6849 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6850 variable TERM.
6851
6852 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6853 ``set width'' instead.
6854
6855 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6856 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6857 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6858 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6859
6860 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6861 is OFF.
6862
6863 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6864 "raw" form if off.
6865
6866 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6867 like instructions.
6868
6869 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6870
6871
6872 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6873
6874 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6875 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6876 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6877 window.
6878
6879
6880 * Support for Shared Libraries
6881
6882 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6883 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6884 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6885 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6886 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6887 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6888 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6889 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6890
6891 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6892 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6893 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6894
6895 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6896
6897
6898 * Watchpoints
6899
6900 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6901 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6902 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6903 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6904 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6905 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6906
6907 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6908
6909 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6910
6911 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6912 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6913 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6914
6915
6916 * C++ multiple inheritance
6917
6918 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6919 for C++ programs.
6920
6921 * C++ exception handling
6922
6923 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6924 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6925 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6926 handler's context).
6927
6928 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6929 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6930 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6931
6932 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6933 current stack frame.
6934
6935
6936 * Minor command changes
6937
6938 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6939 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6940 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6941
6942 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6943 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6944 frames without printing.
6945
6946 * New directory command
6947
6948 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6949 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6950 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6951 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6952 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6953
6954 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6955
6956 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6957 for more details.
6958
6959 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6960 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6961 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6962 where the program that you are debugging will run.