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