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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 10
5
6 * GDB now supports general memory tagging functionality if the underlying
7 architecture supports the proper primitives and hooks. Currently this is
8 enabled only for AArch64 MTE.
9
10 This includes:
11
12 - Additional information when the inferior crashes with a SIGSEGV caused by
13 a memory tag violation.
14
15 - A new modifier 'm' for the "x" command, which displays allocation tags for a
16 particular memory range.
17
18 - Display of memory tag mismatches by "print", for addresses and
19 pointers, if memory tagging is supported by the architecture.
20
21 * Building GDB now requires GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
22 Library).
23
24 * MI changes
25
26 ** '-break-insert --qualified' and '-dprintf-insert --qualified'
27
28 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
29 new "--qualified" option that makes GDB interpret a specified
30 function name as a complete fully-qualified name. This is the
31 equivalent of the CLI's "break -qualified" and "dprintf
32 -qualified".
33
34 ** '-break-insert --force-condition' and '-dprintf-insert --force-condition'
35
36 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
37 '--force-condition' flag to forcibly define a condition even when
38 the condition is invalid at all locations of the breakpoint. This
39 is equivalent to the '-force-condition' flag of the CLI's "break"
40 command.
41
42 ** '-break-condition --force'
43
44 The MI -break-condition command now supports a '--force' flag to
45 forcibly define a condition even when the condition is invalid at
46 all locations of the selected breakpoint. This is equivalent to
47 the '-force' flag of the CLI's "cond" command.
48
49 * GDB now supports core file debugging for x86_64 Cygwin programs.
50
51 * GDB will now look for the .gdbinit file in a config directory before
52 looking for ~/.gdbinit. The file is searched for in the following
53 locations: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.config/gdb/gdbinit,
54 $HOME/.gdbinit. On Apple hosts the search order is instead:
55 $HOME/Library/Preferences/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.gdbinit.
56
57 * GDB now supports fixed point types which are described in DWARF
58 as base types with a fixed-point encoding. Additionally, support
59 for the DW_AT_GNU_numerator and DW_AT_GNU_denominator has also
60 been added.
61
62 For Ada, this allows support for fixed point types without requiring
63 the use of the GNAT encoding (based on information added to the type's
64 name following a GNAT-specific format).
65
66 * GDB will now load and process commands from ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit
67 or ~/.gdbearlyinit if these files are present. These files are
68 processed earlier than any of the other initialization files and
69 can affect parts of GDB's startup that previously had already been
70 completed before the initialization files were read, for example
71 styling of the initial GDB greeting.
72
73 * GDB now has two new options "--early-init-command" and
74 "--early-init-eval-command" with corresponding short options "-eix"
75 and "-eiex" that allow options (that would normally appear in a
76 gdbearlyinit file) to be passed on the command line.
77
78 * New commands
79
80 set debug event-loop
81 show debug event-loop
82 Control the display of debug output about GDB's event loop.
83
84 set print memory-tag-violations
85 show print memory-tag-violations
86 Control whether to display additional information about memory tag violations
87 when printing pointers and addresses. Architecture support for memory
88 tagging is required for this option to have an effect.
89
90 maintenance flush symbol-cache
91 maintenance flush register-cache
92 These new commands are equivalent to the already existing commands
93 'maintenance flush-symbol-cache' and 'flushregs' respectively.
94
95 maintenance flush dcache
96 A new command to flush the dcache.
97
98 maintenance info target-sections
99 Print GDB's internal target sections table.
100
101 memory-tag show-logical-tag POINTER
102 Print the logical tag for POINTER.
103 memory-tag with-logical-tag POINTER TAG
104 Print POINTER with logical tag TAG.
105 memory-tag show-allocation-tag ADDRESS
106 Print the allocation tag for ADDRESS.
107 memory-tag set-allocation-tag ADDRESS LENGTH TAGS
108 Set the allocation tag for [ADDRESS, ADDRESS + LENGTH) to TAGS.
109 memory-tag check POINTER
110 Validate that POINTER's logical tag matches the allocation tag.
111
112 set startup-quietly on|off
113 show startup-quietly
114 When 'on', this causes GDB to act as if "-silent" were passed on the
115 command line. This command needs to be added to an early
116 initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to
117 affect GDB.
118
119 set print type hex on|off
120 show print type hex
121 When 'on', the 'ptype' command uses hexadecimal notation to print sizes
122 and offsets of struct members. When 'off', decimal notation is used.
123
124 set python ignore-environment on|off
125 show python ignore-environment
126 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to ignore any
127 environment variables that would otherwise affect how Python
128 behaves. This command needs to be added to an early initialization
129 file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to affect GDB.
130
131 set python dont-write-bytecode auto|on|off
132 show python dont-write-bytecode
133 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to not write any
134 byte-code (.pyc files) to disk. This command needs to be added to
135 an early initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in
136 order to affect GDB. When 'off' byte-code will always be written.
137 When set to 'auto' (the default) Python will check the
138 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.
139
140 * Changed commands
141
142 break [PROBE_MODIFIER] [LOCATION] [thread THREADNUM]
143 [-force-condition] [if CONDITION]
144 This command would previously refuse setting a breakpoint if the
145 CONDITION expression is invalid at a location. It now accepts and
146 defines the breakpoint if there is at least one location at which
147 the CONDITION is valid. The locations for which the CONDITION is
148 invalid, are automatically disabled. If CONDITION is invalid at all
149 of the locations, setting the breakpoint is still rejected. However,
150 the '-force-condition' flag can be used in this case for forcing GDB to
151 define the breakpoint, making all the current locations automatically
152 disabled. This may be useful if the user knows the condition will
153 become meaningful at a future location, e.g. due to a shared library
154 load.
155
156 condition [-force] N COND
157 The behavior of this command is changed the same way for the 'break'
158 command as explained above. The '-force' flag can be used to force
159 GDB into defining the condition even when COND is invalid for all the
160 current locations of breakpoint N.
161
162 flushregs
163 maintenance flush-symbol-cache
164 These commands are deprecated in favor of the new commands
165 'maintenance flush register-cache' and 'maintenance flush
166 symbol-cache' respectively.
167
168 set style version foreground COLOR
169 set style version background COLOR
170 set style version intensity VALUE
171 Control the styling of GDB's version number text.
172
173 inferior [ID]
174 When the ID parameter is omitted, then this command prints information
175 about the current inferior. When the ID parameter is present, the
176 behavior of the command is unchanged and have the inferior ID become
177 the current inferior.
178
179 maintenance info sections
180 The ALLOBJ keyword has been replaced with an -all-objects command
181 line flag. It is now possible to filter which sections are printed
182 even when -all-objects is passed.
183
184 ptype[/FLAGS] TYPE | EXPRESSION
185 The 'ptype' command has two new flags. When '/x' is set, hexadecimal
186 notation is used when printing sizes and offsets of struct members.
187 When '/d' is set, decimal notation is used when printing sizes and
188 offsets of struct members. Default behavior is given by 'show print
189 type hex'.
190
191 * Removed targets and native configurations
192
193 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
194
195 * New remote packets
196
197 qMemTags
198 Request the remote to send allocation tags for a particular memory range.
199 QMemTags
200 Request the remote to store the specified allocation tags to the requested
201 memory range.
202
203 * Guile API
204
205 ** Improved support for rvalue reference values:
206 TYPE_CODE_RVALUE_REF is now exported as part of the API and the
207 value-referenced-value procedure now handles rvalue reference
208 values.
209
210 *** Changes in GDB 10
211
212 * There are new feature names for ARC targets: "org.gnu.gdb.arc.core"
213 and "org.gnu.gdb.arc.aux". The old names are still supported but
214 must be considered obsolete. They will be deprecated after some
215 grace period.
216
217 * Help and apropos commands will now show the documentation of a
218 command only once, even if that command has one or more aliases.
219 These commands now show the command name, then all of its aliases,
220 and finally the description of the command.
221
222 * 'help aliases' now shows only the user defined aliases. GDB predefined
223 aliases are shown together with their aliased command.
224
225 * GDB now supports debuginfod, an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF
226 debugging information as well as source code.
227
228 When built with debuginfod, GDB can automatically query debuginfod
229 servers for the separate debug files and source code of the executable
230 being debugged.
231
232 To build GDB with debuginfod, pass --with-debuginfod to configure (this
233 requires libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library).
234
235 debuginfod is distributed with elfutils, starting with version 0.178.
236
237 You can get the latest version from https://sourceware.org/elfutils.
238
239 * Multi-target debugging support
240
241 GDB now supports debugging multiple target connections
242 simultaneously. For example, you can now have each inferior
243 connected to different remote servers running in different machines,
244 or have one inferior debugging a local native process, an inferior
245 debugging a core dump, etc.
246
247 This support is experimental and comes with some limitations -- you
248 can only resume multiple targets simultaneously if all targets
249 support non-stop mode, and all remote stubs or servers must support
250 the same set of remote protocol features exactly. See also "info
251 connections" and "add-inferior -no-connection" below, and "maint set
252 target-non-stop" in the user manual.
253
254 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
255
256 ** GDBserver is now supported on ARC GNU/Linux.
257
258 ** GDBserver is now supported on RISC-V GNU/Linux.
259
260 ** GDBserver no longer supports these host triplets:
261
262 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
263 powerpc-*-lynxos*
264 i[34567]86-*-nto*
265 bfin-*-*linux*
266 crisv32-*-linux*
267 cris-*-linux*
268 m32r*-*-linux*
269 tilegx-*-linux*
270 arm*-*-mingw32ce*
271 i[34567]86-*-mingw32ce*
272
273 * Debugging MS-Windows processes now sets $_exitsignal when the
274 inferior is terminated by a signal, instead of setting $_exitcode.
275
276 * Multithreaded symbol loading has now been enabled by default on systems
277 that support it (see entry for GDB 9, below), providing faster
278 performance for programs with many symbols.
279
280 * The $_siginfo convenience variable now also works on Windows targets,
281 and will display the EXCEPTION_RECORD of the last handled exception.
282
283 * TUI windows can now be arranged horizontally.
284
285 * The command history filename can now be set to the empty string
286 either using 'set history filename' or by setting 'GDBHISTFILE=' in
287 the environment. The effect of setting this filename to the empty
288 string is that GDB will not try to load any previous command
289 history.
290
291 * On Windows targets, it is now possible to debug 32-bit programs with a
292 64-bit GDB.
293
294 * New commands
295
296 set exec-file-mismatch -- Set exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
297 show exec-file-mismatch -- Show exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
298 Set or show the option 'exec-file-mismatch'. When GDB attaches to a
299 running process, this new option indicates whether to detect
300 a mismatch between the current executable file loaded by GDB and the
301 executable file used to start the process. If 'ask', the default,
302 display a warning and ask the user whether to load the process
303 executable file; if 'warn', just display a warning; if 'off', don't
304 attempt to detect a mismatch.
305
306 tui new-layout NAME WINDOW WEIGHT [WINDOW WEIGHT]...
307 Define a new TUI layout, specifying its name and the windows that
308 will be displayed.
309
310 maintenance print xml-tdesc [FILE]
311 Prints the current target description as an XML document. If the
312 optional FILE is provided (which is an XML target description) then
313 the target description is read from FILE into GDB, and then
314 reprinted.
315
316 maintenance print core-file-backed-mappings
317 Prints file-backed mappings loaded from a core file's note section.
318 Output is expected to be similar to that of "info proc mappings".
319
320 set debug fortran-array-slicing on|off
321 show debug fortran-array-slicing
322 Print debugging when taking slices of Fortran arrays.
323
324 set fortran repack-array-slices on|off
325 show fortran repack-array-slices
326 When taking slices from Fortran arrays and strings, if the slice is
327 non-contiguous within the original value then, when this option is
328 on, the new value will be repacked into a single contiguous value.
329 When this option is off, then the value returned will consist of a
330 descriptor that describes the slice within the memory of the
331 original parent value.
332
333 * Changed commands
334
335 alias [-a] [--] ALIAS = COMMAND [DEFAULT-ARGS...]
336 The alias command can now specify default args for an alias.
337 GDB automatically prepends the alias default args to the argument list
338 provided explicitly by the user.
339 For example, to have a backtrace with full details, you can define
340 an alias 'bt_ALL' as
341 'alias bt_ALL = backtrace -entry-values both -frame-arg all
342 -past-main -past-entry -full'.
343 Alias default arguments can also use a set of nested 'with' commands,
344 e.g. 'alias pp10 = with print pretty -- with print elem 10 -- print'
345 defines the alias pp10 that will pretty print a maximum of 10 elements
346 of the given expression (if the expression is an array).
347
348 * New targets
349
350 GNU/Linux/RISC-V (gdbserver) riscv*-*-linux*
351 BPF bpf-unknown-none
352
353 * Python API
354
355 ** gdb.register_window_type can be used to implement new TUI windows
356 in Python.
357
358 ** Dynamic types can now be queried. gdb.Type has a new attribute,
359 "dynamic", and gdb.Type.sizeof can be None for a dynamic type. A
360 field of a dynamic type may have None for its "bitpos" attribute
361 as well.
362
363 ** Commands written in Python can be in the "TUI" help class by
364 registering with the new constant gdb.COMMAND_TUI.
365
366 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.architecture () to retrieve the
367 architecture of the pending frame.
368
369 ** New gdb.Architecture.registers method that returns a
370 gdb.RegisterDescriptorIterator object, an iterator that returns
371 gdb.RegisterDescriptor objects. The new RegisterDescriptor is a
372 way to query the registers available for an architecture.
373
374 ** New gdb.Architecture.register_groups method that returns a
375 gdb.RegisterGroupIterator object, an iterator that returns
376 gdb.RegisterGroup objects. The new RegisterGroup is a way to
377 discover the available register groups.
378
379 * Guile API
380
381 ** GDB can now be built with GNU Guile 3.0 and 2.2 in addition to 2.0.
382
383 ** Procedures 'memory-port-read-buffer-size',
384 'set-memory-port-read-buffer-size!', 'memory-port-write-buffer-size',
385 and 'set-memory-port-write-buffer-size!' are deprecated. When
386 using Guile 2.2 and later, users who need to control the size of
387 a memory port's internal buffer can use the 'setvbuf' procedure.
388
389 *** Changes in GDB 9
390
391 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
392
393 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
394 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
395 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
396 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
397 such as in system-wide init files.
398
399 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
400 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
401 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
402 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
403 current GDB settings.
404
405 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
406 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
407 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
408 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
409
410 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
411 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
412 postfix [PAC].
413
414 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
415 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
416
417 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
418 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
419 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
420
421 * The command define-prefix can now define user defined prefix commands.
422 User defined commands can now be defined using these user defined prefix
423 commands.
424
425 * Command names can now use the . character.
426
427 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
428
429 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
430 messages.
431
432 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
433
434 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
435 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
436
437 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
438 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
439 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
440
441 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
442
443 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
444 not visible in the current scope.
445
446 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
447 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
448 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
449 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
450 compiled with support for that language.
451
452 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
453 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
454 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
455
456 * Python API
457
458 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
459 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
460 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
461 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
462 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
463
464 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
465 type was defined in.
466
467 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
468 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
469 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
470 is given.
471
472 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
473 symbols with static linkage.
474
475 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
476 all static symbols with static linkage.
477
478 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
479 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
480
481 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
482 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
483
484 * New commands
485
486 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
487 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
488 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
489 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
490 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
491 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
492 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
493
494 define-prefix COMMAND
495 Define or mark a command as a user-defined prefix command.
496
497 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
498 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
499 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
500 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
501 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
502 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
503 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
504 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
505 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
506 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
507 of array elements to print.
508
509 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
510 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
511
512 set may-call-functions [on|off]
513 show may-call-functions
514 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
515 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
516 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
517 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
518 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
519 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
520 in the program.
521
522 set print finish [on|off]
523 show print finish
524 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
525 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
526 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
527 default is `on'.
528
529 set print max-depth
530 show print max-depth
531 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
532 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
533 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
534 the old behavior back.
535
536 set print raw-values [on|off]
537 show print raw-values
538 By default, GDB applies the enabled pretty printers when printing a
539 value. This allows to ignore the enabled pretty printers for a series
540 of commands. The default is 'off'.
541
542 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
543 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
544 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
545
546 set style title foreground COLOR
547 set style title background COLOR
548 set style title intensity VALUE
549 Control the styling of titles.
550
551 set style highlight foreground COLOR
552 set style highlight background COLOR
553 set style highlight intensity VALUE
554 Control the styling of highlightings.
555
556 maint set worker-threads
557 maint show worker-threads
558 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
559 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
560 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
561 the names of linker symbols.
562
563 set style tui-border foreground COLOR
564 set style tui-border background COLOR
565 Control the styling of TUI borders.
566
567 set style tui-active-border foreground COLOR
568 set style tui-active-border background COLOR
569 Control the styling of the active TUI border.
570
571 maint set test-settings KIND
572 maint show test-settings KIND
573 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
574 infrastructure.
575
576 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
577 maint show tui-resize-message
578 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
579 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
580 TUI.
581
582 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
583 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
584 show print frame-info
585 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
586 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
587 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
588 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
589
590 set tui compact-source
591 show tui compact-source
592
593 Enable the "compact" display mode for the TUI source window. The
594 compact display uses only as much space as is needed for the line
595 numbers in the current file, and only a single space to separate the
596 line numbers from the source.
597
598 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
599 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
600 no REGEXP is given.
601
602 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
603 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
604 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
605 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
606 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
607 matches against the function name.
608
609 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
610 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
611 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
612 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
613 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
614 against the variable name.
615
616 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
617 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
618 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
619 "set debug remote".
620 The default is 512 bytes.
621
622 info connections
623 Lists the target connections currently in use.
624
625 * Changed commands
626
627 help
628 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
629 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
630 command names.
631
632 apropos [-v] REGEXP
633 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
634 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
635 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
636 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
637 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
638
639 printf
640 eval
641 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
642 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
643 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
644 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
645
646 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
647 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
648 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
649 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
650 parts of the files.
651
652 show style
653 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
654 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
655 the user visualize the different styles.
656
657 set print frame-arguments
658 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
659 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
660
661 set print raw-frame-arguments
662 show print raw-frame-arguments
663
664 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
665 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
666 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
667 release.
668
669 add-inferior [-no-connection]
670 The add-inferior command now supports a "-no-connection" flag that
671 makes the new inferior start with no target connection associated.
672 By default, the new inferior inherits the target connection of the
673 current inferior. See also "info connections".
674
675 info inferior
676 This command's output now includes a new "Connection" column
677 indicating which target connection an inferior is bound to. See
678 "info connections" above.
679
680 maint test-options require-delimiter
681 maint test-options unknown-is-error
682 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
683 maint show test-options-completion-result
684 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
685 framework.
686
687 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
688 These commands are now case-sensitive.
689
690 * New command options, command completion
691
692 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
693 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
694 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
695 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
696 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
697 number of commands got support for new command options in this
698 release:
699
700 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
701 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
702 set by "set print" subcommands:
703
704 -address [on|off]
705 -array [on|off]
706 -array-indexes [on|off]
707 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
708 -null-stop [on|off]
709 -object [on|off]
710 -pretty [on|off]
711 -raw-values [on|off]
712 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
713 -static-members [on|off]
714 -symbol [on|off]
715 -union [on|off]
716 -vtbl [on|off]
717
718 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
719 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
720 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
721 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
722
723 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
724 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
725 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
726
727 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
728 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
729 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
730 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
731 |location-and-address|short-location
732 -past-main [on|off]
733 -past-entry [on|off]
734
735 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
736 exposed as command options too:
737
738 -full
739 -no-filters
740 -hide
741
742 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
743 support the following options:
744
745 -past-main [on|off]
746 -past-entry [on|off]
747
748 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
749 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
750
751 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
752 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
753 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
754 like for example:
755
756 (gdb) p -ra -p -o 0 -- *myptr
757
758 The above is equivalent to:
759
760 (gdb) print -raw-values -pretty -object off -- *myptr
761
762 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
763 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
764 variables" and "info functions".
765
766 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
767 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
768 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
769 from the results.
770
771 * Completion improvements
772
773 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
774 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
775 abbreviated.
776
777 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
778 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
779 commands.
780
781 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
782 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
783 completes on filenames.
784
785 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
786 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
787
788 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
789
790 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
791 elements unlimited".
792
793 * New MI commands
794
795 -complete
796 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
797 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
798 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
799
800 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
801 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
802 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
803
804 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
805 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
806 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
807
808 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
809 modules' command.
810
811 -symbol-info-module-functions and -symbol-info-module-variables.
812 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
813 module functions' and 'info module variables'.
814
815 * Other MI changes
816
817 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
818
819 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
820 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
821 the following commands and events:
822
823 - -break-insert
824 - -break-info
825 - =breakpoint-created
826 - =breakpoint-modified
827
828 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
829 this behavior with previous MI versions.
830
831 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
832 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
833 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
834 present.
835
836 * Testsuite
837
838 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
839 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
840 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
841 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
842
843 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
844
845 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
846 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
847
848 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
849
850 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
851 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
852
853 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
854 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
855 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
856
857 * Removed targets and native configurations
858
859 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
860 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
861 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
862
863 * New Simulators
864
865 TI PRU pru-*-elf
866
867 * Removed targets and native configurations
868
869 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
870 sparc*-*-solaris2.10
871
872 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
873
874 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
875 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
876 HTM registers.
877
878 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
879 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
880 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
881 and operators.
882
883 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
884 (the C++ plug-in).
885
886 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
887 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
888 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
889
890 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
891 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
892
893 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
894 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
895 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
896 in the GDB user manual.
897
898 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
899 executed failed.
900
901 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
902
903 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
904 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
905 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
906 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
907 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
908 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
909 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
910 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
911 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
912 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
913 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
914 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
915
916 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
917 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
918 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
919 information.
920
921 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
922 lucid.
923
924 * New commands
925
926 set debug compile-cplus-types
927 show debug compile-cplus-types
928 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
929 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiling
930 for other languages.
931
932 set debug skip
933 show debug skip
934 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
935 displayed.
936
937 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
938 Apply a command to some frames.
939 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
940 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
941
942 taas COMMAND
943 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
944 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
945
946 faas COMMAND
947 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
948 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
949
950 tfaas COMMAND
951 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
952 output).
953 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
954
955 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
956 maint show dwarf unwinders
957 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
958
959 info proc files
960 Display a list of open files for a process.
961
962 * Changed commands
963
964 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
965 These commands all now take a frame specification which
966 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
967 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
968 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
969 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
970 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
971
972 target remote FILENAME
973 target extended-remote FILENAME
974 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
975 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
976
977 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
978 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
979 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
980 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
981 These commands can now print only the searched entities
982 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
983 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
984 printing headers or informations messages.
985
986 info functions
987 info types
988 info variables
989 rbreak
990 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
991 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
992 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
993 the shown entities.
994
995 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
996 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
997 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
998 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
999
1000 set tui tab-width NCHARS
1001 show tui tab-width NCHARS
1002 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
1003
1004 set style enabled [on|off]
1005 show style enabled
1006 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
1007 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
1008
1009 set style sources [on|off]
1010 show style sources
1011 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
1012 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
1013 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
1014
1015 set style filename foreground COLOR
1016 set style filename background COLOR
1017 set style filename intensity VALUE
1018 Control the styling of file names.
1019
1020 set style function foreground COLOR
1021 set style function background COLOR
1022 set style function intensity VALUE
1023 Control the styling of function names.
1024
1025 set style variable foreground COLOR
1026 set style variable background COLOR
1027 set style variable intensity VALUE
1028 Control the styling of variable names.
1029
1030 set style address foreground COLOR
1031 set style address background COLOR
1032 set style address intensity VALUE
1033 Control the styling of addresses.
1034
1035 * MI changes
1036
1037 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
1038 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
1039 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
1040 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
1041 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
1042
1043 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
1044 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
1045
1046 * New native configurations
1047
1048 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1049 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1050
1051 * New targets
1052
1053 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1054 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
1055 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
1056 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1057 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
1058 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
1059
1060 * Removed targets
1061
1062 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
1063 before Windows XP.
1064
1065 * Python API
1066
1067 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
1068
1069 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
1070 space associated to that inferior.
1071
1072 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
1073 of objfiles associated to that program space.
1074
1075 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
1076 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
1077 the gdb core.
1078
1079 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
1080 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
1081 correct and did not work properly.
1082
1083 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
1084 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
1085
1086 * Configure changes
1087
1088 --enable-ubsan
1089
1090 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
1091 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
1092 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
1093 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
1094 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
1095
1096 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
1097
1098 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
1099 for the MIPS target.
1100
1101 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
1102 offset to all sections.
1103
1104 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
1105 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
1106 address of individual sections using '-s'.
1107
1108 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
1109 (address of the text section).
1110
1111 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
1112 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
1113 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
1114 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
1115 default.
1116
1117 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
1118 for the rest of the current command.
1119
1120 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
1121 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
1122
1123 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
1124 files created on FreeBSD systems.
1125
1126 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
1127 alignof.
1128
1129 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
1130 the vector length while the process is running.
1131
1132 * New commands
1133
1134 set debug fbsd-nat
1135 show debug fbsd-nat
1136 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
1137
1138 set|show varsize-limit
1139 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
1140 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
1141 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
1142
1143 set|show record btrace cpu
1144 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
1145 branch trace decode.
1146
1147 maint check libthread-db
1148 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
1149 library
1150
1151 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
1152 maint show check-libthread-db
1153 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
1154 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
1155 perform such checks.
1156
1157 * Python API
1158
1159 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
1160
1161 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
1162 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
1163
1164 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
1165
1166 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
1167 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
1168 of convenience variables.
1169
1170 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
1171 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
1172 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
1173
1174 * New targets
1175
1176 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
1177
1178 * Removed targets and native configurations
1179
1180 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
1181 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
1182 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
1183 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
1184
1185 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
1186
1187 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
1188 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
1189 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
1190 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
1191 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
1192 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
1193 reported.
1194
1195 * Configure changes
1196
1197 --enable-codesign=CERT
1198 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
1199 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
1200 gdb to work properly.
1201
1202 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
1203 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
1204
1205 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
1206
1207 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
1208 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
1209 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
1210
1211 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
1212 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
1213
1214 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
1215 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
1216 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
1217 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
1218 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
1219
1220 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
1221 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
1222 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
1223 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
1224
1225 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
1226 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
1227
1228 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
1229 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
1230 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
1231
1232 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
1233 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
1234 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
1235
1236 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
1237 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
1238 environment" command.
1239
1240 * Completion improvements
1241
1242 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
1243 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
1244 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
1245 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
1246 correctly:
1247
1248 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
1249 (gdb) b function(int)
1250
1251 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
1252 C++ anonymous namespaces:
1253
1254 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
1255 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
1256 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
1257 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
1258
1259 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
1260 completion support, that better understands what you're
1261 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
1262 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
1263 setting a breakpoint.
1264
1265 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
1266
1267 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
1268
1269 * New command line options (gcore)
1270
1271 -a
1272 Dump all memory mappings.
1273
1274 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
1275
1276 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
1277 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
1278 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
1279
1280 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
1281
1282 A::B::func()
1283 B::func()
1284
1285 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
1286 on both symbols.
1287
1288 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
1289 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
1290 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
1291 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
1292 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
1293 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
1294 a breakpoint from Python.
1295
1296 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1297
1298 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1299 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
1300 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
1301
1302 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
1303
1304 function[abi:cxx11](int)
1305 ^^^^^^^^^^^
1306
1307 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
1308 no tag, like:
1309
1310 (gdb) b function(int)
1311
1312 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
1313
1314 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
1315
1316 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
1317
1318 * Python Scripting
1319
1320 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
1321 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
1322 description of these.
1323
1324 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
1325 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
1326 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
1327
1328 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
1329 manual for a further description of this feature.
1330
1331
1332 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1333
1334 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
1335 specified initial working directory.
1336
1337 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
1338 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
1339
1340 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
1341 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
1342
1343 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
1344 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
1345
1346 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
1347 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
1348 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
1349 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
1350 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
1351
1352 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
1353 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
1354 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
1355
1356 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
1357 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
1358 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
1359 in the *stopped notification.
1360
1361 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
1362 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
1363
1364 * New remote packets
1365
1366 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
1367 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
1368 the inferior when starting it.
1369
1370 QEnvironmentUnset
1371 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
1372 before starting the remote inferior.
1373
1374 QEnvironmentReset
1375 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
1376 user-set environment variables should be unset).
1377
1378 QStartupWithShell
1379 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
1380
1381 QSetWorkingDir
1382 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
1383 working directory.
1384
1385 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
1386 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
1387
1388 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
1389 filter the tests to be run.
1390
1391 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
1392 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
1393
1394 * New commands
1395
1396 set|show cwd
1397 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
1398
1399 set|show compile-gcc
1400 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
1401 with the 'compile' commands.
1402
1403 set debug separate-debug-file
1404 show debug separate-debug-file
1405 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
1406
1407 set dump-excluded-mappings
1408 show dump-excluded-mappings
1409 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
1410 dumped when generating a core file.
1411
1412 maint info selftests
1413 List the registered selftests.
1414
1415 starti
1416 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
1417
1418 set|show debug or1k
1419 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
1420
1421 set|show print type nested-type-limit
1422 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
1423 type printer will show.
1424
1425 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
1426 `o' for nexti.
1427
1428 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
1429
1430 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
1431 'int'.
1432
1433 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
1434 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
1435 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
1436 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
1437
1438 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
1439 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
1440 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
1441 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1442 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
1443 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1444
1445 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
1446 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
1447 unless you tell it the variable's type:
1448
1449 (gdb) p var
1450 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
1451 (gdb) p (float) var
1452 $3 = 3.14
1453
1454 * New native configurations
1455
1456 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1457 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1458
1459 * New targets
1460
1461 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1462 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1463 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
1464
1465 * Removed targets and native configurations
1466
1467 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
1468
1469 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
1470
1471 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
1472 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
1473 available in future Intel CPUs.
1474
1475 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
1476
1477 * Python Scripting
1478
1479 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
1480 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
1481
1482 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
1483 instructions.
1484
1485 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
1486
1487 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
1488
1489 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
1490 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
1491 removed.
1492
1493 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
1494
1495 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
1496 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
1497
1498 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
1499
1500 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
1501 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
1502 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
1503 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
1504 features.
1505
1506 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
1507
1508 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
1509 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
1510 debugger.
1511
1512 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
1513
1514 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1515 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1516
1517 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1518
1519 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1520
1521 define mycommand
1522 set $i = 0
1523 while $i < $argc
1524 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1525 set $i = $i + 1
1526 end
1527 end
1528
1529 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1530
1531 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1532 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1533
1534 * New native configurations
1535
1536 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1537
1538 * New targets
1539
1540 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1541 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1542
1543 * Removed targets and native configurations
1544
1545 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1546 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1547
1548 * New commands
1549
1550 flash-erase
1551 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1552
1553 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1554 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1555
1556 * New options
1557
1558 set disassembler-options
1559 show disassembler-options
1560 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1561 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1562 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1563 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1564 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1565
1566 * New MI commands
1567
1568 -target-flash-erase
1569 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1570 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1571
1572 -file-list-shared-libraries
1573 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1574 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1575
1576 -catch-handlers
1577 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1578 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1579
1580 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1581
1582 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1583
1584 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1585 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1586 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1587 option will be removed in a future release.
1588
1589 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1590 GDB connection.
1591
1592 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1593 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1594
1595 (gdb) bt
1596 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1597 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1598 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1599 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1600 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1601 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1602 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1603 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1604 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1605
1606 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1607 arrays of dynamic types.
1608
1609 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1610 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1611 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1612 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1613 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1614 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1615
1616 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1617 descriptions.
1618
1619 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1620 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1621 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1622
1623 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1624
1625 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1626 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1627 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1628 signal received and code location.
1629
1630 For example:
1631
1632 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1633 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1634 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1635 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1636
1637 * Rust language support.
1638 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1639 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1640 Rust.
1641
1642 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1643
1644 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1645 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1646 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1647 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1648 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1649 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1650 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1651 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1652 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1653 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1654 line.
1655
1656 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1657
1658 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1659 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1660
1661 * New commands
1662
1663 skip -file file
1664 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1665 skip -function function
1666 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1667 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1668 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1669 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1670
1671 maint info line-table REGEXP
1672 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data structure.
1673
1674 maint selftest
1675 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1676
1677 new-ui INTERP TTY
1678 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1679 using the TTY file for input/output.
1680
1681 * Python Scripting
1682
1683 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1684 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1685 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1686 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1687 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1688
1689 signal-event EVENTID
1690 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1691 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1692 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1693 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1694 signalling an event.
1695
1696 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1697 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1698 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1699
1700 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1701 been removed:
1702
1703 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1704 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1705 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1706 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1707 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1708 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1709
1710 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1711 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1712 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1713 bytecode into native code.
1714
1715 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1716 recording. For example:
1717
1718 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1719
1720 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1721
1722 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1723
1724 * New targets
1725
1726 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1727
1728 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1729
1730 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1731
1732 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1733
1734 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1735 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1736 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1737
1738 (gdb) info threads
1739 Id Target Id Frame
1740 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1741 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1742 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1743 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1744
1745 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1746 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1747 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1748
1749 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1750 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1751 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1752
1753 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1754 IDs.
1755
1756 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1757 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1758
1759 (gdb) thread 2.1
1760 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1761 (gdb)
1762
1763 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1764 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1765 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1766 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1767 threads 2.*".
1768
1769 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1770 all threads.
1771
1772 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1773 the current thread.
1774
1775 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1776 current inferior.
1777
1778 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1779 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1780 example:
1781
1782 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1783 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1784
1785 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1786
1787 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1788
1789 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1790 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1791
1792 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1793 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1794 clients.
1795
1796 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1797 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1798 at the same time.
1799
1800 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1801 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1802 into native code.
1803
1804 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1805
1806 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1807 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1808 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1809
1810 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1811 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1812
1813 * New commands
1814
1815 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1816 maint show target-non-stop
1817 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1818 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1819 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1820
1821 maint set bfd-sharing
1822 maint show bfd-sharing
1823 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1824
1825 set debug bfd-cache
1826 show debug bfd-cache
1827 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1828
1829 set debug fbsd-lwp
1830 show debug fbsd-lwp
1831 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1832
1833 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1834 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1835 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1836
1837 set remote thread-events
1838 show remote thread-events
1839 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1840
1841 set ada print-signatures on|off
1842 show ada print-signatures"
1843 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1844 selection menus. It is activated (@code{on}) by default.
1845
1846 set max-value-size
1847 show max-value-size
1848 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1849 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1850 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1851
1852 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1853 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1854 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1855 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1856 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1857 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1858
1859 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1860 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1861
1862 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1863 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1864
1865 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1866
1867 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1868 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1869 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1870 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1871 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1872 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1873
1874 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1875 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1876
1877 catch handlers
1878 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1879
1880 * New remote packets
1881
1882 exec stop reason
1883 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1884
1885 exec-events feature in qSupported
1886 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1887 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1888 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1889 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1890
1891 vCtrlC
1892 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1893 non-stop mode.
1894
1895 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1896 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1897
1898 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1899 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1900
1901 QThreadEvents
1902 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1903 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1904 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1905 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1906 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1907 stop for that same thread.
1908
1909 N stop reply
1910 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1911 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1912 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1913
1914 QCatchSyscalls
1915 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1916 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1917
1918 syscall_entry stop reason
1919 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1920
1921 syscall_return stop reason
1922 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1923
1924 * Extended-remote exec events
1925
1926 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1927 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1928 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1929
1930 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1931 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1932 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1933
1934 * Thread names in remote protocol
1935
1936 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1937 thread.
1938
1939 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1940
1941 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1942 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1943 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1944 fork and exec catchpoints.
1945
1946 * Remote syscall events
1947
1948 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1949 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1950
1951 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1952 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1953 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1954
1955 * MI changes
1956
1957 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1958 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1959 left.
1960
1961 * Python Scripting
1962
1963 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1964 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1965 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1966 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1967 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1968 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1969
1970 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1971
1972 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1973 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1974 including advance SIMD instructions.
1975
1976 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1977
1978 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1979 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1980 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1981 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1982 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1983 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1984 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1985
1986 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1987 cpu information :
1988 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1989
1990 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1991 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1992 remote serial I/O.
1993
1994 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1995 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1996 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1997
1998 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1999 is now available on all platforms.
2000
2001 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
2002 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
2003 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
2004 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
2005 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
2006 backward compatibility.
2007
2008 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
2009 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
2010 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
2011 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
2012
2013 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
2014 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
2015 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
2016 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
2017 packets" below.
2018
2019 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
2020
2021 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
2022
2023 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
2024 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
2025 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
2026 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
2027 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
2028 See "New remote packets" below.
2029
2030 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
2031 available register groups, including target specific groups.
2032
2033 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
2034 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
2035 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
2036 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
2037 are ignored.
2038
2039 * Guile Scripting
2040
2041 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
2042
2043 * Python Scripting
2044
2045 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
2046 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
2047 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
2048 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
2049 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
2050 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
2051 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
2052 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
2053 "const" version of the value respectively.
2054
2055 * New commands
2056
2057 maint print symbol-cache
2058 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
2059
2060 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
2061 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
2062
2063 maint flush-symbol-cache
2064 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
2065
2066 record btrace bts
2067 record bts
2068 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
2069
2070 compile print
2071 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
2072
2073 tui enable
2074 tui disable
2075 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
2076
2077 show mpx bound
2078 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
2079 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
2080
2081 record btrace pt
2082 record pt
2083 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
2084
2085 maint info btrace
2086 Print information about branch tracing internals.
2087
2088 maint btrace packet-history
2089 Print the raw branch tracing data.
2090
2091 maint btrace clear-packet-history
2092 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
2093
2094 maint btrace clear
2095 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
2096 anew by the next "record" command.
2097
2098 * New options
2099
2100 set debug dwarf-die
2101 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
2102 show debug dwarf-die
2103 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
2104
2105 set debug dwarf-read
2106 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
2107 show debug dwarf-read
2108 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
2109
2110 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
2111 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2112 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
2113 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2114
2115 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
2116 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2117 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
2118 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2119
2120 set debug dwarf-line
2121 show debug dwarf-line
2122 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
2123
2124 set max-completions
2125 show max-completions
2126 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
2127 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
2128 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
2129 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
2130
2131 set history remove-duplicates
2132 show history remove-duplicates
2133 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
2134
2135 maint set symbol-cache-size
2136 maint show symbol-cache-size
2137 Control the size of the symbol cache.
2138
2139 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
2140 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2141 BTS format.
2142 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2143 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2144
2145 set debug linux-namespaces
2146 show debug linux-namespaces
2147 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
2148
2149 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
2150 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2151 Intel Processor Trace format.
2152 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2153 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2154
2155 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
2156 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
2157 packet history.
2158
2159 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
2160 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
2161
2162 * Python/Guile scripting
2163
2164 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
2165 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
2166
2167 * New remote packets
2168
2169 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
2170 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
2171
2172 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
2173 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
2174
2175 Qbtrace:pt
2176 Enable Intel Processor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
2177 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
2178 qSupported query.
2179
2180 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
2181 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
2182 Trace format.
2183
2184 swbreak stop reason
2185 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
2186 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
2187 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
2188 mode operation.
2189
2190 hwbreak stop reason
2191 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
2192 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
2193
2194 vFile:fstat:
2195 Return information about files on the remote system.
2196
2197 qXfer:exec-file:read
2198 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
2199 create a process running on the remote system.
2200
2201 vFile:setfs:
2202 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
2203 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
2204 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
2205 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
2206
2207 fork stop reason
2208 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
2209
2210 vfork stop reason
2211 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
2212
2213 vforkdone stop reason
2214 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
2215 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
2216
2217 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
2218 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
2219 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
2220 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
2221 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
2222 whether these features are enabled.
2223
2224 * Extended-remote fork events
2225
2226 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
2227 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
2228 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
2229 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
2230
2231 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
2232 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
2233 the btrace record target.
2234 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
2235
2236 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
2237 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
2238
2239 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
2240 targets.
2241
2242 * Removed command line options
2243
2244 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
2245
2246 * Removed targets and native configurations
2247
2248 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
2249 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2250
2251 * New configure options
2252
2253 --with-intel-pt
2254 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
2255 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
2256
2257 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
2258 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
2259 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
2260 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
2261
2262 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
2263
2264 * Python Scripting
2265
2266 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
2267
2268 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
2269
2270 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
2271
2272 * Python Scripting
2273
2274 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
2275 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
2276 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
2277 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
2278 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
2279 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
2280 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
2281 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
2282 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
2283 selecting a new file to debug.
2284 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
2285 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
2286
2287 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
2288 inferior.
2289
2290 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
2291 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
2292 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
2293 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
2294
2295 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2296
2297 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2298 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2299 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2300 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2301
2302 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
2303 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
2304 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
2305 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
2306 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
2307 interface with this new feature are:
2308
2309 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
2310 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
2311
2312 * New commands
2313
2314 demangle [-l language] [--] name
2315 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
2316 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
2317 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
2318 as "maint demangler-warning".
2319
2320 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
2321 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
2322
2323 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
2324 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
2325 scripts.
2326
2327 maint print user-registers
2328 List all currently available "user" registers.
2329
2330 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
2331 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
2332 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
2333
2334 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
2335 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
2336 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
2337 provided.
2338
2339 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
2340 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
2341 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
2342 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
2343 at resume time.
2344
2345 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
2346 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
2347 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
2348 switched threads meanwhile.
2349
2350 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
2351
2352 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
2353 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
2354 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
2355 is now the default mode.
2356
2357 * New options
2358
2359 set debug symbol-lookup
2360 show debug symbol-lookup
2361 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
2362
2363 * MI changes
2364
2365 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
2366 inferiors that have exited.
2367
2368 * New targets
2369
2370 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
2371
2372 * Removed targets
2373
2374 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2375
2376 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
2377 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
2378 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
2379 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
2380 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
2381
2382 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2383 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2384 its alias "share", instead.
2385
2386 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
2387
2388 * New command line options
2389
2390 -D data-directory
2391 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
2392
2393 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
2394 as specified in ISO C99.
2395
2396 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
2397 with or without disassembly.
2398
2399 * Guile scripting
2400
2401 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
2402 available is determined at configure time.
2403 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
2404 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
2405
2406 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2407
2408 guile [code]
2409 gu [code]
2410 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
2411
2412 guile-repl
2413 gr
2414 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
2415
2416 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
2417 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
2418
2419 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
2420 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
2421
2422 * New options
2423
2424 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
2425 show print symbol-loading
2426 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
2427 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
2428 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
2429 becomes less useful.
2430
2431 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
2432 show guile print-stack
2433 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
2434
2435 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
2436 show auto-load guile-scripts
2437 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
2438
2439 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
2440 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
2441 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
2442 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
2443 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
2444 usage of this option.
2445
2446 set auto-connect-native-target
2447
2448 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
2449 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
2450 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
2451
2452 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
2453 show record btrace replay-memory-access
2454 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
2455
2456 maint set target-async (on|off)
2457 maint show target-async
2458 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
2459 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
2460 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
2461 occurring only in synchronous mode.
2462
2463 set mi-async (on|off)
2464 show mi-async
2465 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
2466 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
2467
2468 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
2469 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
2470
2471 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
2472 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
2473 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
2474 "set target-async on" command.
2475
2476 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2477
2478 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
2479 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
2480 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
2481 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
2482 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
2483
2484 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
2485 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
2486 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
2487
2488 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
2489 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
2490 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
2491 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
2492 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
2493 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
2494 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
2495
2496 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
2497 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
2498
2499 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
2500 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
2501 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
2502
2503 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
2504 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
2505 memory or registers.
2506
2507 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
2508
2509 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
2510 remote. It now works with all targets.
2511
2512 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
2513 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
2514 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2515 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2516 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2517 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2518 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2519 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2520 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2521 target-stack".
2522
2523 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2524 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2525 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2526
2527 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2528
2529 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2530 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2531 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2532
2533 * New remote packets
2534
2535 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2536 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2537 branch trace incrementally.
2538
2539 * Python Scripting
2540
2541 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2542 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2543 available.
2544 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2545 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2546 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2547 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2548 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2549
2550 * New targets
2551 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2552
2553 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2554 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2555 its alias "share", instead.
2556
2557 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2558 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2559 instead.
2560
2561 * MI changes
2562
2563 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2564 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2565 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2566 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2567 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2568 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2569 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2570 commands and CLI execution commands.
2571
2572 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2573
2574 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2575 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2576 recording has been added.
2577
2578 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2579
2580 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2581 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2582
2583 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2584 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2585 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2586 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2587 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2588 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2589 "void".
2590
2591 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2592
2593 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2594
2595 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2596 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2597 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2598 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2599
2600 (gdb) p $rax
2601 $1 = <not saved>
2602
2603 (gdb) info registers rax
2604 rax <not saved>
2605
2606 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2607 "*value not available*".
2608
2609 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2610 to binaries.
2611
2612 * Python scripting
2613
2614 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2615 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2616 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2617 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2618 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2619 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2620
2621 * New targets
2622
2623 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2624 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2625 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2626
2627 * Removed native configurations
2628
2629 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2630 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2631
2632 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2633 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2634 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2635 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2636 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2637 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2638 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2639
2640 * New commands:
2641 catch rethrow
2642 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2643 maint check-psymtabs
2644 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2645 maint check-symtabs
2646 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2647 maint expand-symtabs
2648 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2649
2650 show configuration
2651 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2652
2653 maint set|show per-command
2654 maint set|show per-command space
2655 maint set|show per-command time
2656 maint set|show per-command symtab
2657 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2658
2659 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2660 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2661 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2662 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2663 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2664
2665 info exceptions
2666 info exceptions REGEXP
2667 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2668 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2669 are listed.
2670
2671 * New options
2672
2673 set debug symfile off|on
2674 show debug symfile
2675 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2676 symbol tables within those files
2677
2678 set print raw frame-arguments
2679 show print raw frame-arguments
2680 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2681 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2682
2683 set remote trace-status-packet
2684 show remote trace-status-packet
2685 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2686
2687 set debug nios2
2688 show debug nios2
2689 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2690
2691 set range-stepping
2692 show range-stepping
2693 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2694
2695 set startup-with-shell
2696 show startup-with-shell
2697 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2698 directly.
2699
2700 set code-cache
2701 show code-cache
2702 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2703 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2704
2705 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2706 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2707 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2708 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2709 "set height 0".
2710
2711 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2712 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2713 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2714
2715 * New command-line options
2716 --configuration
2717 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2718
2719 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2720 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2721
2722 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2723 GDB command gcore.
2724
2725 * GDB now implements the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2726
2727 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2728 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2729
2730 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2731 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2732
2733 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2734 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2735 due to an uncaught signal.
2736
2737 * MI changes
2738
2739 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2740 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2741 command, which should contain "language-option".
2742
2743 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2744 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2745
2746 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2747 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2748 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2749 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2750 "undefined-command-error-code".
2751
2752 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2753 Trace Format now.
2754
2755 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2756
2757 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2758 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2759 are displayed.
2760
2761 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2762 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2763
2764 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2765 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2766 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2767
2768 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2769 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2770 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2771 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2772 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2773 "exec-run-start-option".
2774
2775 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2776 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2777
2778 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2779 the new "info exceptions" command.
2780
2781 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2782 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2783 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2784 ** ElinOS
2785 ** Wind River Linux
2786
2787 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2788 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2789 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2790 below.
2791
2792 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2793 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2794
2795 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2796 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2797 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2798
2799 * New remote packets
2800
2801 vCont;r
2802
2803 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2804 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2805 involvemement at each single-step.
2806
2807 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2808 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2809 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2810 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2811 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2812 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2813 speedup.
2814
2815 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2816
2817 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2818 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2819
2820 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2821 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2822 trace state variables.
2823
2824 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2825 target.
2826
2827 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2828 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2829
2830 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2831
2832 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2833 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2834 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2835 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2836
2837 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2838
2839 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2840 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2841 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2842 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2843
2844 set|show record full insn-number-max
2845 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2846 set|show record full memory-query
2847
2848 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2849 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2850 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2851 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2852 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2853
2854 record btrace
2855
2856 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2857 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2858
2859 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2860 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2861 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2862
2863 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2864 instruction granularity
2865
2866 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2867 function granularity
2868
2869 * New native configurations
2870
2871 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2872 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2873 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2874 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2875
2876 * New targets
2877
2878 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2879 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2880 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2881 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2882 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2883
2884 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2885 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2886 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2887 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2888 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2889 --data-directory command-line option.
2890
2891 * New command line options:
2892
2893 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2894 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2895
2896 * Removed command line options
2897
2898 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2899 Emacs.
2900
2901 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2902 type formatting.
2903
2904 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2905
2906 * Python scripting
2907
2908 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2909
2910 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2911
2912 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2913
2914 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2915
2916 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2917 of architecture in the Python API.
2918
2919 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2920 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2921
2922 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2923
2924 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2925 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2926 ** $_strlen(str)
2927 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2928
2929 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2930 given an argument.
2931
2932 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2933 default for GCC since November 2000.
2934
2935 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2936
2937 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2938 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2939
2940 * New configure options
2941
2942 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2943 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2944 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2945 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2946 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2947 options allow the user to override that default.
2948 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2949 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2950 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2951
2952 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2953
2954 catch signal
2955 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2956 conditions to be attached.
2957
2958 maint info bfds
2959 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2960
2961 python-interactive [command]
2962 pi [command]
2963 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2964 and print the result of expressions.
2965
2966 py [command]
2967 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2968
2969 enable type-printer [name]...
2970 disable type-printer [name]...
2971 Enable or disable type printers.
2972
2973 * Removed commands
2974
2975 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2976 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2977 instead.
2978
2979 * New options
2980
2981 set print type methods (on|off)
2982 show print type methods
2983 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2984 The default is to show them.
2985
2986 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2987 show print type typedefs
2988 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2989 The default is to show them.
2990
2991 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2992 show filename-display
2993 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2994 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2995
2996 set trace-buffer-size
2997 show trace-buffer-size
2998 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2999
3000 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
3001 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
3002 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
3003
3004 set debug aarch64
3005 show debug aarch64
3006 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
3007 The default is off.
3008
3009 set debug coff-pe-read
3010 show debug coff-pe-read
3011 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
3012 exported symbols.
3013
3014 set debug mach-o
3015 show debug mach-o
3016 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
3017 processing.
3018
3019 set debug notification
3020 show debug notification
3021 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
3022
3023 * MI changes
3024
3025 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
3026 "=cmd-param-changed".
3027 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
3028 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
3029 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
3030 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
3031 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
3032 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
3033 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
3034 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
3035 "=memory-changed".
3036 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
3037 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
3038 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
3039 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3040 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
3041 library load/unload events.
3042 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
3043 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
3044 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
3045 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
3046 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
3047 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
3048 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
3049 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
3050
3051 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
3052 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
3053 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
3054 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
3055
3056 * New remote packets
3057
3058 QTBuffer:size
3059 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
3060 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3061
3062 Qbtrace:bts
3063 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
3064 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
3065 qSupported query.
3066
3067 Qbtrace:off
3068 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
3069 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3070
3071 qXfer:btrace:read
3072 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
3073 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3074
3075 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
3076
3077 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
3078 for more x32 ABI info.
3079
3080 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
3081
3082 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
3083
3084 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
3085 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
3086 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
3087 "info os files" lists file descriptors
3088 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
3089 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
3090 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
3091 "info os msg" lists message queues
3092 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
3093
3094 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
3095 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
3096 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
3097 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
3098 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
3099 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
3100
3101 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
3102 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
3103 record/replay support.
3104
3105 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
3106
3107 * Python scripting
3108
3109 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
3110 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
3111
3112 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
3113
3114 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
3115 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
3116
3117 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
3118
3119 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
3120 the source at which the symbol was defined.
3121
3122 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
3123 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
3124 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
3125 symbol's value.
3126
3127 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
3128 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
3129
3130 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
3131 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
3132 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
3133
3134 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
3135 object associated with a PC value.
3136
3137 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
3138 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
3139
3140 * Go language support.
3141 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
3142 language.
3143
3144 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
3145 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
3146
3147 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
3148 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
3149
3150 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
3151 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
3152 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
3153 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
3154 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
3155 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
3156
3157 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
3158 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
3159 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
3160 build/libcpp/expr.c.
3161
3162 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
3163 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
3164
3165 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
3166 since December 2007.
3167
3168 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
3169 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
3170 command does. For instance:
3171
3172 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
3173
3174 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
3175 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
3176 created, using the "condition" command.
3177
3178 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
3179 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
3180
3181 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
3182
3183 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
3184 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
3185 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
3186 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
3187 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
3188 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
3189 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
3190 files with older .gdb_index sections.
3191
3192 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
3193 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
3194 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
3195 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
3196 the .gdb_index section.
3197
3198 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
3199
3200 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
3201 target.
3202
3203 * MI changes
3204
3205 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
3206
3207 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
3208
3209 * New commands
3210
3211 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3212 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3213 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
3214
3215 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
3216 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
3217
3218 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
3219 several hits.
3220
3221 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
3222 C++ and Java objects.
3223
3224 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
3225 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
3226 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
3227 configured with '--with-python'.
3228
3229 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
3230 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
3231 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
3232 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
3233 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
3234 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
3235 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
3236
3237 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
3238 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
3239 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
3240 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
3241
3242 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
3243 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
3244 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
3245 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
3246
3247 ** "set print symbol"
3248 "show print symbol"
3249 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
3250 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
3251 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
3252
3253 * Deprecated commands
3254
3255 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
3256 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
3257
3258 * New targets
3259
3260 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3261 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
3262
3263 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
3264 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
3265 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
3266 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
3267 evaluates to true.
3268
3269 * New options
3270
3271 set mips compression
3272 show mips compression
3273 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
3274 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
3275 mips16
3276 micromips
3277 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
3278
3279 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
3280 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
3281 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
3282 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
3283 available mode.
3284 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
3285 target.
3286
3287 set auto-load off
3288 Disable auto-loading globally.
3289
3290 show auto-load
3291 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
3292
3293 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
3294 show auto-load gdb-scripts
3295 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
3296
3297 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
3298 show auto-load python-scripts
3299 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
3300
3301 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
3302 show auto-load local-gdbinit
3303 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
3304
3305 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
3306 show auto-load libthread-db
3307 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
3308
3309 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3310 show auto-load scripts-directory
3311 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
3312 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
3313 of the directories listed by this option.
3314 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3315
3316 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3317 show auto-load safe-path
3318 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
3319 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3320
3321 set debug auto-load on|off
3322 show debug auto-load
3323 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
3324
3325 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
3326 show dprintf-style
3327 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
3328 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
3329 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
3330 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
3331
3332 set dprintf-function <expr>
3333 show dprintf-function
3334 set dprintf-channel <expr>
3335 show dprintf-channel
3336 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
3337 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
3338
3339 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
3340 show disconnected-dprintf
3341 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
3342 after GDB disconnects.
3343
3344 * New configure options
3345
3346 --with-auto-load-dir
3347 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
3348 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
3349 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
3350 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
3351 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
3352
3353 --with-auto-load-safe-path
3354 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
3355 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
3356
3357 --without-auto-load-safe-path
3358 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
3359 security feature.
3360
3361 * New remote packets
3362
3363 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
3364
3365 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
3366 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
3367 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
3368 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
3369
3370 QProgramSignals:
3371
3372 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
3373 program without GDB involvement.
3374
3375 * New command line options
3376
3377 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
3378 before loading inferior.
3379 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
3380 execute it before loading inferior.
3381
3382 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
3383
3384 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
3385 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
3386 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
3387 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
3388 inferior changes.
3389
3390 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
3391 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
3392
3393 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
3394 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
3395 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
3396 target hardware watchpoint.
3397
3398 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
3399 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
3400 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
3401 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
3402
3403 * Python scripting
3404
3405 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
3406 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
3407 existing one.
3408
3409 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
3410 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
3411 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
3412 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
3413 now "message", which just prints the error message without
3414 the stack trace.
3415
3416 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3417 Python API.
3418
3419 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
3420 modules library. This module provides functionality for
3421 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
3422 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
3423 corresponding value.
3424
3425 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
3426 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
3427 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
3428 on GDB start-up.
3429
3430 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
3431 static_block will return the global and static blocks
3432 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
3433 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
3434
3435 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
3436
3437 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
3438 "gdb.breakpoints".
3439
3440 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
3441 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
3442 available in the CLI.
3443
3444 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
3445 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
3446 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
3447 "some_type.items()".
3448
3449 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
3450 new object file.
3451
3452 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
3453 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
3454 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
3455 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
3456 any anonymous fields.
3457
3458 * MI changes
3459
3460 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
3461 "solib-event".
3462
3463 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
3464 "=breakpoint-modified".
3465
3466 ** New command -ada-task-info.
3467
3468 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
3469 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
3470 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
3471 lives.
3472
3473 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
3474 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
3475 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
3476 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
3477 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
3478
3479 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
3480 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
3481
3482 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
3483 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
3484 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
3485 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
3486 use this option to specify where to find it.
3487
3488 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3489 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
3490 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
3491 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
3492 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
3493 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3494 section in the user manual for more details.
3495
3496 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
3497 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
3498 become available after that.
3499
3500 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
3501
3502 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
3503 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
3504 gcc version 4.7.
3505
3506 * New commands
3507
3508 !SHELL COMMAND
3509 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
3510 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
3511
3512 * Changed commands
3513
3514 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3515 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3516 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3517
3518 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3519 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3520 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3521
3522 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3523 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3524 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3525 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3526 name starts with a hyphen.
3527
3528 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3529 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3530 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3531 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3532 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3533 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3534 number of bytes that will be collected.
3535
3536 tstart [NOTES]
3537 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3538 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3539 setting the variable trace-notes.
3540
3541 tstop [NOTES]
3542 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3543 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3544 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3545 trace-stop-notes.
3546
3547 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3548 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3549 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3550 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3551 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3552 is running.
3553
3554 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3555 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3556 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3557
3558 * New options
3559
3560 set debug dwarf2-read
3561 show debug dwarf2-read
3562 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3563 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3564
3565 set debug symtab-create
3566 show debug symtab-create
3567 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3568 creation. The default is off.
3569
3570 set extended-prompt
3571 show extended-prompt
3572 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3573 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3574 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3575 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3576 prompt is displayed.
3577
3578 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3579 show print entry-values
3580 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3581 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3582 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3583
3584 set debug entry-values
3585 show debug entry-values
3586 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3587 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3588
3589 set basenames-may-differ
3590 show basenames-may-differ
3591 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3592 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3593 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3594 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3595 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3596 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3597 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3598 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3599
3600 set trace-user
3601 show trace-user
3602 set trace-notes
3603 show trace-notes
3604 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3605 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3606 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3607 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3608
3609 set trace-stop-notes
3610 show trace-stop-notes
3611 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3612 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3613 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3614 started by someone else.
3615
3616 * New remote packets
3617
3618 QTEnable
3619
3620 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3621
3622 QTDisable
3623
3624 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3625
3626 QTNotes
3627
3628 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3629
3630 qTP
3631
3632 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3633
3634 qTMinFTPILen
3635
3636 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3637 be placed.
3638
3639 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3640 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3641
3642 * New targets
3643
3644 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3645
3646 * New Simulators
3647
3648 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3649
3650 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3651
3652 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3653
3654 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3655
3656 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3657 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3658 matches the given regular expression.
3659
3660 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3661
3662 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3663 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3664
3665 * New command line options
3666
3667 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3668 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3669
3670 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3671 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3672
3673 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3674 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3675 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3676
3677 * GDB now understands thread names.
3678
3679 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3680 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3681
3682 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3683 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3684
3685 * OpenCL C
3686 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3687 has been integrated into GDB.
3688
3689 * Python scripting
3690
3691 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3692 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3693 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3694
3695 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3696 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3697 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3698 and allows for more dynamic content.
3699
3700 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3701 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3702 have an is_valid method.
3703
3704 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3705 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3706 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3707
3708 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3709
3710 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3711 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3712 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3713 that function like so:
3714
3715 result = some_value (10,20)
3716
3717 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3718 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3719 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3720
3721 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3722 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3723 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3724 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3725 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3726
3727 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3728 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3729
3730 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3731
3732 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3733 selected thread.
3734
3735 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3736 holds the thread's name.
3737
3738 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3739 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3740 occurring in the process being debugged.
3741 The following events are currently supported:
3742 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3743 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3744 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3745
3746 * C++ Improvements:
3747
3748 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3749 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3750
3751 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3752
3753 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3754 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3755 was added to GCC 4.5.
3756
3757 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3758 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3759 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3760 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3761 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3762 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3763
3764 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3765 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3766 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3767 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3768 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3769
3770 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3771 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3772 execution to a label.
3773
3774 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3775 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3776 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3777 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3778
3779 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3780 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3781 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3782 of scope.
3783
3784 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3785
3786 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3787 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3788 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3789 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3790 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3791 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3792
3793 (gdb) info threads
3794 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3795
3796 While now you see this:
3797
3798 (gdb) info threads
3799 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3800
3801 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3802 dumps.
3803
3804 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3805 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3806 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3807 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3808
3809 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3810 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3811 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3812 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3813 section in the user manual for more details.
3814
3815 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3816
3817 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3818 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3819
3820 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3821
3822 * New native configurations
3823
3824 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3825
3826 * New targets:
3827
3828 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3829
3830 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3831 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3832 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3833 in the GDB user manual.
3834
3835 * Guile support was removed.
3836
3837 * New features in the GNU simulator
3838
3839 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3840
3841 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3842
3843 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3844
3845 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3846
3847 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3848 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3849 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3850 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3851 was always disabled for such configurations.
3852
3853 * C++ Improvements:
3854
3855 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3856
3857 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3858 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3859 For example:
3860 namespace A
3861 {
3862 class B { };
3863 void foo (B) { }
3864 }
3865 ...
3866 A::B b
3867 foo(b)
3868 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3869 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3870 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3871
3872 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3873
3874 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3875 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3876 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3877 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3878 entry.
3879 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3880 mentioned flavors of operators.
3881
3882 ** static const class members
3883
3884 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3885 class definition has been fixed.
3886
3887 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3888
3889 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3890 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3891 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3892 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3893 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3894 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3895
3896 * Static tracepoints
3897
3898 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3899 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3900 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3901 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3902 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3903 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3904 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3905 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3906 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3907 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3908 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3909 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3910 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3911 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3912 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3913 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3914 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3915 the "New remote packets" section below.
3916
3917 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3918
3919 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3920 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3921 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3922 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3923
3924 * Observer mode
3925
3926 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3927 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3928 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3929 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3930 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3931 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3932 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3933
3934 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3935 current thread.
3936
3937 * New remote packets
3938
3939 qGetTIBAddr
3940
3941 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3942
3943 qRelocInsn
3944
3945 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3946 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3947 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3948 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3949 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3950 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3951
3952 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3953
3954 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3955
3956 qTSTMat
3957
3958 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3959 program.
3960
3961 qXfer:statictrace:read
3962
3963 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3964 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3965 to gdb's qSupported query.
3966
3967 QAllow
3968
3969 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3970
3971 QTDPsrc
3972
3973 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3974 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3975
3976 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3977 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3978 a directory.
3979
3980 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3981
3982 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3983 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3984 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3985 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3986
3987 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3988 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3989 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3990 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3991 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3992 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3993 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3994
3995 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3996 for static tracepoints support.
3997
3998 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3999
4000 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
4001 it understands register description.
4002
4003 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
4004
4005 * X86 general purpose registers
4006
4007 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
4008 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
4009 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
4010 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
4011 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
4012
4013 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
4014 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
4015 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
4016 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
4017 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
4018 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
4019
4020 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
4021 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
4022 in the specified file.
4023
4024 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
4025 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
4026 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
4027 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
4028 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
4029 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
4030 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
4031 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
4032 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
4033 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
4034
4035 * New commands
4036
4037 eval template, expressions...
4038 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
4039 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
4040
4041 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
4042 show target-file-system-kind
4043 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
4044 names.
4045
4046 save breakpoints <filename>
4047 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
4048 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
4049 definitions, use the `source' command.
4050
4051 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
4052 is now deprecated.
4053
4054 info static-tracepoint-markers
4055 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
4056
4057 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
4058 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
4059 function, line, address, or marker ID.
4060
4061 set observer on|off
4062 show observer
4063 Enable and disable observer mode.
4064
4065 set may-write-registers on|off
4066 set may-write-memory on|off
4067 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
4068 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
4069 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
4070 set may-interrupt on|off
4071 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
4072 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
4073 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
4074 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
4075 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
4076 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
4077 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
4078
4079 set record memory-query on|off
4080 show record memory-query
4081 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
4082 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
4083
4084 * Changed commands
4085
4086 disassemble
4087 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
4088
4089 * Python scripting
4090
4091 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
4092 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
4093 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
4094 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
4095 GDB using Python' in the manual.
4096
4097 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
4098 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
4099 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
4100 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
4101
4102 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
4103 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
4104
4105 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
4106
4107 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
4108
4109 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
4110
4111 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
4112 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
4113 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
4114
4115 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
4116 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
4117 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
4118 regular breakpoints.
4119
4120 * New targets
4121
4122 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
4123
4124 * D language support.
4125 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
4126 language.
4127
4128 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
4129 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
4130 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
4131 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
4132 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
4133
4134 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
4135 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
4136 conditions of the form:
4137
4138 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
4139
4140 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
4141 interface mentioned above.
4142
4143 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
4144
4145 * C++ Improvements
4146
4147 ** Namespace Support
4148
4149 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
4150 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
4151 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
4152 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
4153 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
4154
4155 ** Bug Fixes
4156
4157 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
4158 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
4159 qualified name.
4160
4161 ** Cast Operators
4162
4163 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
4164 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
4165
4166 * New targets
4167
4168 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
4169 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
4170
4171 * New Simulators
4172
4173 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
4174 Renesas RX rx
4175
4176 * Multi-program debugging.
4177
4178 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
4179 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
4180 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
4181 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
4182 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
4183 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
4184 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
4185 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
4186
4187 * New tracing features
4188
4189 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
4190
4191 ** Trace state variables
4192
4193 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
4194 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
4195 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
4196 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
4197 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
4198 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
4199 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
4200 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
4201 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
4202 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
4203
4204 ** Fast tracepoints
4205
4206 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
4207 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
4208 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
4209 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
4210 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
4211 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
4212 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
4213 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
4214 the regular trace command.
4215
4216 ** Disconnected tracing
4217
4218 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
4219 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
4220 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
4221 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
4222 connection is lost unexpectedly.
4223
4224 ** Trace files
4225
4226 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
4227 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
4228 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
4229 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
4230 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
4231 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
4232 <name>".
4233
4234 ** Circular trace buffer
4235
4236 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
4237 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
4238 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
4239 not be available for all target agents.
4240
4241 * Changed commands
4242
4243 disassemble
4244 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
4245 the arguments to be comma-separated.
4246
4247 info variables
4248 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
4249 which only declare a variable are not shown.
4250
4251 source
4252 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
4253 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
4254 support.
4255
4256 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
4257 "set script-extension" (see below).
4258
4259 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4260
4261 record save [<FILENAME>]
4262 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
4263 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
4264
4265 record restore <FILENAME>
4266 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
4267 earlier time, for replay debugging.
4268
4269 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
4270 Add a new inferior.
4271
4272 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
4273 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
4274 inferior has loaded.
4275
4276 remove-inferior ID
4277 Remove an inferior.
4278
4279 maint info program-spaces
4280 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
4281
4282 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
4283 show remote interrupt-sequence
4284 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
4285 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
4286 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
4287 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
4288 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
4289
4290 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
4291 show remote interrupt-on-connect
4292 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
4293 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
4294 Linux kernel.
4295
4296 set remotebreak [on | off]
4297 show remotebreak
4298 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
4299
4300 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
4301 Create or modify a trace state variable.
4302
4303 info tvariables
4304 List trace state variables and their values.
4305
4306 delete tvariable $NAME ...
4307 Delete one or more trace state variables.
4308
4309 teval EXPR, ...
4310 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
4311 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
4312
4313 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
4314 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
4315
4316 * New expression syntax
4317
4318 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
4319 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
4320
4321 * New options
4322
4323 set follow-exec-mode new|same
4324 show follow-exec-mode
4325 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
4326 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
4327 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
4328
4329 set default-collect EXPR, ...
4330 show default-collect
4331 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
4332 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
4333 such as registers or a critical global variable.
4334
4335 set disconnected-tracing
4336 show disconnected-tracing
4337 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
4338 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
4339 upon disconnection.
4340
4341 set circular-trace-buffer
4342 show circular-trace-buffer
4343 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
4344 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
4345 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
4346 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
4347
4348 set script-extension off|soft|strict
4349 show script-extension
4350 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
4351 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
4352 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
4353 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
4354 evaluation failed.
4355 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
4356
4357 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
4358 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
4359 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
4360 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
4361 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
4362 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
4363 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
4364 is on.
4365
4366 * Python API Improvements
4367
4368 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
4369 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
4370 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
4371
4372 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
4373 `is_base_class' attribute.
4374
4375 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
4376
4377 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
4378 evaluate an expression.
4379
4380 * New remote packets
4381
4382 QTDV
4383 Define a trace state variable.
4384
4385 qTV
4386 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
4387
4388 QTDisconnected
4389 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
4390
4391 QTBuffer:circular
4392 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
4393
4394 qTfP, qTsP
4395 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
4396
4397 * Bug fixes
4398
4399 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
4400
4401 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
4402 much more reliable. In particular:
4403 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
4404 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
4405 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
4406 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
4407 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
4408 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
4409 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
4410 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
4411 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
4412 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
4413 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
4414 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
4415 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
4416 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
4417 non-threaded programs.
4418
4419 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
4420 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
4421 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
4422 executable program.
4423
4424 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
4425
4426 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
4427 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
4428 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
4429 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
4430 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
4431
4432 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
4433 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
4434 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
4435 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
4436 for tracepoint actions.
4437
4438 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
4439 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
4440 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
4441
4442 * Process record and replay
4443
4444 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
4445 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
4446 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
4447 execute commands.
4448
4449 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
4450 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
4451 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
4452 reverse execution.
4453
4454 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
4455 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4456 2.6.28 or later.
4457
4458 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
4459 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
4460 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
4461 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
4462 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
4463 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
4464 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
4465 the installation instructions for more information.
4466
4467 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
4468 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
4469 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
4470 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
4471
4472 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
4473 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
4474
4475 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
4476 now complete on file names.
4477
4478 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
4479 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
4480 For instance, consider:
4481
4482 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
4483 # struct example variable;
4484 (gdb) p variable.
4485
4486 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
4487 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
4488
4489 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
4490 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
4491
4492 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
4493 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
4494 macros.
4495
4496 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
4497 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
4498 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
4499
4500 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
4501 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
4502 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
4503 and simulator targets may also provide them.
4504
4505 * New remote packets
4506
4507 qSearch:memory:
4508 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4509
4510 QStartNoAckMode
4511 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
4512 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
4513 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
4514
4515 vKill
4516 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4517 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4518
4519 qXfer:osdata:read
4520 Obtains additional operating system information
4521
4522 qXfer:siginfo:read
4523 qXfer:siginfo:write
4524 Read or write additional signal information.
4525
4526 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4527
4528 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4529 packet that permitted the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4530 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4531
4532 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4533 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4534
4535 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4536 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4537 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4538
4539 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4540 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4541
4542 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4543
4544 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4545
4546 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4547 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4548
4549 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote protocol packet now allows passing a
4550 list of section offsets.
4551
4552 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4553 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4554 have also been fixed.
4555
4556 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4557 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4558 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4559
4560 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4561 example, given:
4562
4563 template<typename T> class C { };
4564 C<char const *> c;
4565
4566 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4567
4568 ptype C<char const *>
4569 ptype C<char const*>
4570 ptype C<const char *>
4571 ptype C<const char*>
4572
4573 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4574
4575 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4576 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4577
4578 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4579 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4580 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4581
4582 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4583 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4584
4585 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4586 gdbserver.
4587
4588 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4589 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4590
4591 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4592 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4593 as appropriate.
4594
4595 * Python scripting
4596
4597 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4598 available is determined at configure time.
4599
4600 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4601
4602 * Ada tasking support
4603
4604 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4605 been introduced:
4606
4607 info tasks
4608 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4609 info task N
4610 Print detailed information about task number N.
4611 task
4612 Print the task number of the current task.
4613 task N
4614 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4615
4616 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4617 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4618
4619 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4620
4621 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4622 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4623 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4624 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4625 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4626 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4627 below.
4628
4629 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4630 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4631 information.
4632
4633 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4634 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4635 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4636 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4637 more information.
4638
4639 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4640
4641 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4642 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4643 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4644 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4645 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4646
4647 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4648 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4649 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4650 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4651 --enable-targets configure option.
4652
4653 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4654
4655 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4656 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4657 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4658 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4659 section in the user manual for more information.
4660
4661 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4662 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4663 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4664 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4665 extensions on linux targets.
4666
4667 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4668
4669 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4670 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4671 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4672 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4673 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4674 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4675 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4676 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4677 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4678
4679 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4680 val1 [, val2, ...]
4681 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4682
4683 maint set python print-stack
4684 maint show python print-stack
4685 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4686
4687 python [CODE]
4688 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4689
4690 macro define
4691 macro list
4692 macro undef
4693 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4694 interactively.
4695
4696 info os processes
4697 Show operating system information about processes.
4698
4699 info inferiors
4700 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4701
4702 inferior NUM
4703 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4704
4705 detach inferior NUM
4706 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4707
4708 kill inferior NUM
4709 Kill inferior number NUM.
4710
4711 * New options
4712
4713 set spu stop-on-load
4714 show spu stop-on-load
4715 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4716
4717 set spu auto-flush-cache
4718 show spu auto-flush-cache
4719 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4720 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4721
4722 set sh calling-convention
4723 show sh calling-convention
4724 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4725
4726 set debug timestamp
4727 show debug timestamp
4728 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4729
4730 set disassemble-next-line
4731 show disassemble-next-line
4732 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4733 the debuggee stops.
4734
4735 set remote noack-packet
4736 show remote noack-packet
4737 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4738 under "New remote packets."
4739
4740 set remote query-attached-packet
4741 show remote query-attached-packet
4742 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4743
4744 set remote read-siginfo-object
4745 show remote read-siginfo-object
4746 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4747 packet.
4748
4749 set remote write-siginfo-object
4750 show remote write-siginfo-object
4751 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4752 packet.
4753
4754 set remote reverse-continue
4755 show remote reverse-continue
4756 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4757
4758 set remote reverse-step
4759 show remote reverse-step
4760 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4761
4762 set displaced-stepping
4763 show displaced-stepping
4764 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4765 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4766 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4767
4768 set debug displaced
4769 show debug displaced
4770 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4771
4772 maint set internal-error
4773 maint show internal-error
4774 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4775
4776 maint set internal-warning
4777 maint show internal-warning
4778 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4779
4780 set exec-wrapper
4781 show exec-wrapper
4782 unset exec-wrapper
4783 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4784
4785 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4786 show multiple-symbols
4787 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4788 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4789 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4790
4791 set breakpoint always-inserted
4792 show breakpoint always-inserted
4793 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4794 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4795 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4796
4797 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4798 show arm fallback-mode
4799 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4800 show arm force-mode
4801 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4802 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4803 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4804 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4805
4806 set disable-randomization
4807 show disable-randomization
4808 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4809 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4810 multiple debugging sessions.
4811
4812 set non-stop
4813 show non-stop
4814 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4815 a breakpoint.
4816
4817 set target-async
4818 show target-async
4819 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4820 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4821 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4822 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4823
4824 set target-wide-charset
4825 show target-wide-charset
4826 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4827 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4828
4829 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4830 show tcp auto-retry
4831 set tcp connect-timeout
4832 show tcp connect-timeout
4833 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4834 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4835 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4836
4837 set libthread-db-search-path
4838 show libthread-db-search-path
4839 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4840 libthread_db.
4841
4842 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4843 show schedule-multiple
4844 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4845 the current process.
4846
4847 set stack-cache
4848 show stack-cache
4849 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4850 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4851 affecting correctness.
4852
4853 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4854 show interactive-mode
4855 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4856 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4857 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4858 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4859 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4860
4861 * Removed commands
4862
4863 info forks
4864 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4865 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4866 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4867 command.
4868
4869 fork NUM
4870 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4871 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4872 alias for the `fork' command.
4873
4874 process PID
4875 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4876 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4877 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4878
4879 delete fork NUM
4880 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4881 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4882 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4883 fork' command.
4884
4885 detach fork NUM
4886 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4887 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4888 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4889 fork' command.
4890
4891 * New native configurations
4892
4893 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4894
4895 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4896
4897 * New targets
4898
4899 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4900 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4901 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4902 S+core 3 score-*-*
4903
4904 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4905 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4906
4907 * Removed commands
4908
4909 catch load
4910 catch unload
4911 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4912
4913 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4914
4915 * New native configurations
4916
4917 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4918 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4919
4920 * New targets
4921
4922 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4923 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4924
4925 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4926
4927 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4928 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4929 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4930 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4931
4932 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4933 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4934
4935 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4936 is resolved.
4937
4938 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4939 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4940 and in inlined functions.
4941
4942 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4943 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4944 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4945
4946 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4947
4948 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4949 registers on PowerPC targets.
4950
4951 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4952 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4953
4954 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4955 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4956
4957 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4958 extended-remote mode.
4959
4960 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4961 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4962 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4963 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4964
4965 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4966 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4967 target architectures.
4968
4969 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4970 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4971 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4972 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4973
4974 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4975 breakpoints now.
4976
4977 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4978 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4979 include:
4980 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4981 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4982 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4983 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4984 of an assignment
4985 - Improved command completion in Ada
4986 - Several bug fixes
4987
4988 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4989 process.
4990
4991 * New commands
4992
4993 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4994 show print frame-arguments
4995 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4996 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4997
4998 remote put
4999 remote get
5000 remote delete
5001 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5002
5003 * New MI commands
5004
5005 -target-file-put
5006 -target-file-get
5007 -target-file-delete
5008 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5009
5010 * New remote packets
5011
5012 vFile:open:
5013 vFile:close:
5014 vFile:pread:
5015 vFile:pwrite:
5016 vFile:unlink:
5017 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
5018
5019 vAttach
5020 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
5021 mode.
5022
5023 vRun
5024 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
5025
5026 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
5027
5028 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
5029 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
5030 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
5031
5032 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
5033 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
5034 -Bsymbolic linker option.
5035
5036 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
5037 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
5038 is not supported.
5039
5040 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
5041 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
5042
5043 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
5044 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
5045
5046 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
5047
5048 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
5049 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
5050 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
5051
5052 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
5053 automatically displayed as character or string data.
5054
5055 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
5056 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
5057 as strings.
5058
5059 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
5060 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
5061 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
5062
5063 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
5064 iWMMXt coprocessor.
5065
5066 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
5067 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
5068 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
5069
5070 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
5071
5072 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
5073
5074 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
5075 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
5076 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
5077
5078 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
5079 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
5080
5081 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
5082 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
5083 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
5084 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
5085 Windows and SymbianOS).
5086
5087 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
5088 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
5089
5090 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
5091 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
5092
5093 * New commands
5094
5095 set remoteflow
5096 show remoteflow
5097 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
5098 when debugging using remote targets.
5099
5100 set mem inaccessible-by-default
5101 show mem inaccessible-by-default
5102 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5103 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5104 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
5105 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
5106 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
5107
5108 set breakpoint auto-hw
5109 show breakpoint auto-hw
5110 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5111 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5112 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
5113 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
5114 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
5115 including "next" and "finish".
5116
5117 catch exception
5118 catch exception unhandled
5119 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
5120
5121 catch assert
5122 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
5123
5124 set sysroot
5125 show sysroot
5126 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
5127 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
5128 an alias to "set sysroot".
5129
5130 info spu
5131 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
5132 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
5133 architecture.
5134
5135 * New native configurations
5136
5137 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
5138
5139 set tdesc filename
5140 unset tdesc filename
5141 show tdesc filename
5142 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
5143 not query the target for its built-in description.
5144
5145 * New targets
5146
5147 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
5148 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
5149 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
5150
5151 * New remote packets
5152
5153 QPassSignals:
5154 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
5155 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
5156
5157 qXfer:features:read:
5158 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
5159 features.
5160
5161 qXfer:spu:read:
5162 qXfer:spu:write:
5163 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
5164 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
5165
5166 qXfer:libraries:read:
5167 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
5168 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
5169 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
5170 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
5171
5172 * Removed targets
5173
5174 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
5175
5176 alpha*-*-osf1*
5177 alpha*-*-osf2*
5178 d10v-*-*
5179 hppa*-*-hiux*
5180 i[34567]86-ncr-*
5181 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
5182 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
5183 i[34567]86-*-netware*
5184 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
5185 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
5186 i[34567]86-*-sco*
5187 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
5188 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
5189 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
5190 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
5191 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
5192 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
5193 i[34567]86-*-isc*
5194 m68*-cisco*-*
5195 m68*-tandem-*
5196 mips*-*-pe
5197 rs6000-*-lynxos*
5198 sh*-*-pe
5199
5200 * Other removed features
5201
5202 target abug
5203 target cpu32bug
5204 target est
5205 target rom68k
5206
5207 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
5208
5209 target hms
5210 target e7000
5211 target sh3
5212 target sh3e
5213
5214 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
5215 H8/300.
5216
5217 target ocd
5218
5219 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
5220 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
5221 interfaces.
5222
5223 DWARF 1 support
5224
5225 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
5226 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
5227
5228 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
5229
5230 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
5231 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
5232 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
5233 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
5234
5235 MIPS ".pdr" sections
5236
5237 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
5238 in debugging information.
5239
5240 Scheme support
5241
5242 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
5243 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
5244
5245 set mips stack-arg-size
5246 set mips saved-gpreg-size
5247
5248 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
5249
5250 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
5251
5252 * New targets
5253
5254 Xtensa xtensa-elf
5255 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
5256
5257 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
5258 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
5259 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
5260
5261 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
5262 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
5263 supported.
5264
5265 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
5266 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
5267
5268 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
5269 stub provides the required support.
5270
5271 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
5272 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
5273
5274 * New commands
5275
5276 set substitute-path
5277 unset substitute-path
5278 show substitute-path
5279 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
5280 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
5281 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
5282 between compilation and debugging.
5283
5284 set trace-commands
5285 show trace-commands
5286 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
5287 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
5288 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
5289
5290 * REMOVED features
5291
5292 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
5293
5294 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
5295 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
5296
5297 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
5298
5299 * New remote packets
5300
5301 qSupported:
5302 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
5303 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
5304 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
5305 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
5306 target.
5307
5308 qXfer:auxv:read:
5309 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
5310 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
5311
5312 qXfer:memory-map:read:
5313 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
5314 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
5315
5316 vFlashErase:
5317 vFlashWrite:
5318 vFlashDone:
5319 Erase and program a flash memory device.
5320
5321 * Removed remote packets
5322
5323 qPart:auxv:read:
5324 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
5325 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
5326
5327 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
5328
5329 * New targets
5330
5331 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
5332
5333 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5334
5335 * New commands
5336
5337 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
5338 only if it doesn't already have a value.
5339
5340 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
5341
5342 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
5343
5344 restart <n> Return the program state to a
5345 previously saved state.
5346
5347 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
5348
5349 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
5350
5351 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
5352 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
5353
5354 info forks List forks of the user program that
5355 are available to be debugged.
5356
5357 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
5358 forks of the user program that are
5359 available to be debugged.
5360
5361 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5362 that are available to be debugged (and
5363 kill the forked process).
5364
5365 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5366 that are available to be debugged (and
5367 allow the process to continue).
5368
5369 * New architecture
5370
5371 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
5372
5373 * Improved Windows host support
5374
5375 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
5376 native console support, and remote communications using either
5377 network sockets or serial ports.
5378
5379 * Improved Modula-2 language support
5380
5381 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
5382 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
5383 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
5384 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
5385 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
5386 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
5387
5388 * REMOVED features
5389
5390 The ARM rdi-share module.
5391
5392 The Netware NLM debug server.
5393
5394 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
5395
5396 * New native configurations
5397
5398 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
5399 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
5400
5401 * New targets
5402
5403 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5404
5405 * New command line options
5406
5407 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
5408 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
5409 the child (debugged) program exited with.
5410 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
5411 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
5412 specified multiple times and in conjunction
5413 with the --command (-x) option.
5414
5415 * Deprecated commands removed
5416
5417 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
5418 removed:
5419
5420 Command Replacement
5421 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
5422 othernames set arm disassembler
5423 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
5424 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
5425 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
5426 regs info registers
5427
5428 * New BSD user-level threads support
5429
5430 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
5431 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
5432 configurations are:
5433
5434 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5435 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
5436 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
5437
5438 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
5439 are not yet supported.
5440
5441 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
5442 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
5443
5444 * REMOVED configurations and files
5445
5446 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
5447 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5448 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
5449
5450 * New "set print array-indexes" command
5451
5452 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
5453 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
5454 behavior.
5455
5456 * VAX floating point support
5457
5458 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
5459
5460 * User-defined command support
5461
5462 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
5463 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
5464 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
5465
5466 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
5467
5468 * New command line option
5469
5470 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
5471 debugging.
5472
5473 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
5474
5475 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
5476 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
5477 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
5478 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
5479 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
5480
5481 * Internationalization
5482
5483 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
5484 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
5485 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
5486
5487 * Ada
5488
5489 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
5490 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
5491 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
5492
5493 * New native configurations
5494
5495 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
5496
5497 * Remote 'p' packet
5498
5499 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
5500 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
5501
5502 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
5503
5504 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5505 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
5506 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
5507 i386 application).
5508
5509 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the registers[]
5510 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
5511 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
5512 configurations:
5513
5514 hppa-*-hpux
5515 ia64-*-aix
5516 mips-*-irix*
5517 *-*-lynx
5518 mips-*-linux-gnu
5519 sds protocol
5520 xdr protocol
5521 powerpc bdm protocol
5522
5523 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5524 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5525
5526 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5527
5528 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5529 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5530 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5531 permanently REMOVED.
5532
5533 h8300-*-*
5534 mcore-*-*
5535 mn10300-*-*
5536 ns32k-*-*
5537 sh64-*-*
5538 v850-*-*
5539
5540 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5541
5542 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5543
5544 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5545 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5546 been fixed.
5547
5548 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5549
5550 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5551 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5552 IRIX long double values).
5553
5554 * VAX and "next"
5555
5556 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5557 command. This problem has been fixed.
5558
5559 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5560
5561 * Fix for ``many threads''
5562
5563 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5564 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5565 error message:
5566
5567 ptrace: No such process.
5568 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5569
5570 This problem has been fixed.
5571
5572 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5573
5574 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5575 GDB to dump core).
5576
5577 * New ``start'' command.
5578
5579 This command runs the program until the beginning of the main procedure.
5580
5581 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5582
5583 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5584 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5585 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5586
5587 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5588 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5589 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5590 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5591 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5592 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5593 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5594 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5595 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5596
5597 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5598
5599 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5600 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5601 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5602 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5603 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5604
5605 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5606 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5607 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5608
5609 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5610
5611 * New native configurations
5612
5613 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5614 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5615 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5616 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5617 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5618 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5619 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5620
5621 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5622
5623 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5624 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5625 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5626 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5627 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5628 work, was also included.
5629
5630 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5631 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5632
5633 h8300-*-*
5634 mcore-*-*
5635 mn10300-*-*
5636 ns32k-*-*
5637 sh64-*-*
5638 v850-*-*
5639 xstormy16-*-*
5640
5641 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5642 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5643
5644 * REMOVED configurations and files
5645
5646 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5647 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5648 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5649 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5650 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5651 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5652 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5653 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5654 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5655 sonymips mips-sony-*
5656 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5657
5658 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5659
5660 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5661
5662 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5663 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5664 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5665 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5666 with GDB".
5667
5668 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5669
5670 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5671 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5672 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5673 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5674 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5675 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5676 are created.
5677
5678 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5679
5680 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5681
5682 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5683 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5684 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5685
5686 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5687
5688 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5689 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5690
5691 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5692
5693 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5694 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5695 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5696
5697 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5698
5699 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5700 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5701
5702 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5703
5704 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5705 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5706 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5707
5708 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5709
5710 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5711 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5712 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5713
5714 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5715
5716 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5717
5718 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5719 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5720
5721 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5722
5723 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5724 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5725 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5726 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5727
5728 * Revised SPARC target
5729
5730 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5731 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5732 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5733 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5734 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5735
5736 * New C++ demangler
5737
5738 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5739 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5740 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5741 programs.
5742
5743 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5744
5745 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5746 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5747 encountered these.
5748
5749 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5750
5751 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5752 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5753 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5754 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5755 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5756 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5757 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5758 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5759 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5760
5761 * New native configurations
5762
5763 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5764 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5765 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5766 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5767 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5768
5769 * New debugging protocols
5770
5771 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5772
5773 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5774
5775 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5776 and its very obscure effect on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5777 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5778
5779 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5780
5781 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5782 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5783 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5784 permanently REMOVED.
5785
5786 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5787 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5788 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5789 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5790 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5791 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5792 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5793 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5794 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5795 sonymips mips-sony-*
5796 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5797
5798 * REMOVED configurations and files
5799
5800 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5801 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5802 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5803 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5804 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5805 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5806 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5807 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5808 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5809 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5810 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5811 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5812 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5813 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5814 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5815 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5816 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5817
5818 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5819
5820 * Objective-C
5821
5822 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5823 integrated into GDB.
5824
5825 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5826
5827 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5828 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5829 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5830 backtraces.
5831
5832 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5833 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5834 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5835
5836 * Hosted file I/O.
5837
5838 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5839 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5840 remote protocol documentation for details.
5841
5842 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5843
5844 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5845 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5846 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5847 ppc32 on ppc64).
5848
5849 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5850
5851 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5852 per-thread variables.
5853
5854 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5855
5856 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5857 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5858
5859 * Separate debug info.
5860
5861 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5862 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5863 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5864 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5865 and optional debug files.
5866
5867 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5868
5869 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5870 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5871 debugger.
5872
5873 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5874 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5875
5876 * Java
5877
5878 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5879 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5880 considered "useable".
5881
5882 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5883
5884 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5885 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5886 kernel.
5887
5888 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5889
5890 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5891 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5892
5893 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5894
5895 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5896 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5897 command.
5898
5899 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5900
5901 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5902 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5903
5904 * Profiling support
5905
5906 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5907 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5908 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5909 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5910 data, for more informative profiling results.
5911
5912 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5913
5914 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5915 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5916 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5917
5918 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5919 removed.
5920
5921 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5922 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5923 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5924 in a subsequent -var-update.
5925
5926 * New native configurations.
5927
5928 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5929
5930 * Multi-arched targets.
5931
5932 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5933 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5934
5935 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5936
5937 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5938 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5939 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5940 permanently REMOVED.
5941
5942 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5943 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5944 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5945 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5946 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5947 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5948 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5949 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5950 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5951 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5952 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5953 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5954
5955 * REMOVED configurations and files
5956
5957 V850EA ISA
5958 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5959 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5960 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5961 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5962 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5963 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5964 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5965 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5966 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5967 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5968 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5969 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5970 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5971
5972 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5973
5974 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5975 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5976 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5977 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5978 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5979
5980 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5981
5982 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5983
5984 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5985 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5986 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5987 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5988 shared libs like mad''.
5989
5990 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5991
5992 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5993 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5994 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5995 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5996
5997 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5998
5999 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
6000 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
6001 they expand.
6002
6003 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
6004 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
6005
6006 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
6007 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
6008
6009 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
6010 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
6011 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
6012 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
6013
6014 * Multi-arched targets.
6015
6016 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
6017 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
6018 NEC V850 v850-*-*
6019 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
6020 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
6021 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
6022
6023 * New targets.
6024
6025 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
6026
6027
6028 * New native configurations
6029
6030 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
6031 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
6032 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
6033 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
6034
6035 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6036
6037 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6038 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6039 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6040 permanently REMOVED.
6041
6042 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6043 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6044 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
6045 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6046 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6047 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6048 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
6049 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
6050 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
6051 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
6052 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
6053 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
6054 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6055
6056 * OBSOLETE languages
6057
6058 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
6059
6060 * REMOVED configurations and files
6061
6062 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6063 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6064 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6065 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6066 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6067
6068 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6069
6070 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
6071
6072 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
6073 commands. The default is 1024.
6074
6075 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
6076
6077 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
6078
6079 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
6080
6081 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
6082 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
6083 from a file into memory (restore).
6084
6085 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
6086
6087 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
6088 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
6089 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
6090
6091 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
6092
6093 * New targets.
6094
6095 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
6096
6097 * Bug fixes
6098
6099 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
6100 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
6101 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
6102
6103 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
6104 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
6105 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
6106
6107 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
6108 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
6109 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
6110
6111 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
6112 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
6113 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
6114
6115 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
6116
6117 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
6118
6119 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
6120 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
6121 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
6122 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
6123 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
6124 (notably embedded) targets.
6125
6126 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
6127
6128 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
6129 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
6130 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
6131 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
6132
6133 * New command line option
6134
6135 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
6136
6137 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
6138
6139 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
6140 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
6141 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
6142 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
6143 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
6144 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
6145 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
6146 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
6147 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
6148 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
6149
6150 * Changes in ARM configurations.
6151
6152 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
6153 configuration is fully multi-arch.
6154
6155 * New native configurations
6156
6157 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
6158 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
6159 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
6160 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
6161
6162 * New targets
6163
6164 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
6165
6166 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6167
6168 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6169 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6170 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6171 permanently REMOVED.
6172
6173 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6174 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6175 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6176 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6177 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6178
6179 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6180
6181 * REMOVED configurations and files
6182
6183 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6184 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6185 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6186 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6187 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6188 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6189 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6190 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6191 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6192 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6193 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6194 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6195 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
6196
6197 * Changes to command line processing
6198
6199 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
6200 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
6201
6202 * Changes to key bindings
6203
6204 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
6205
6206 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
6207
6208 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
6209
6210 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
6211 corrupted.
6212
6213 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
6214
6215 Numerous documentation fixes.
6216
6217 Numerous testsuite fixes.
6218
6219 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
6220
6221 * New native configurations
6222
6223 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
6224 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
6225 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
6226 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6227 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
6228 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
6229
6230 * New targets
6231
6232 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
6233 CRIS cris-axis
6234 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
6235
6236 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6237
6238 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
6239 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6240 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6241 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6242 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6243 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6244 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6245 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6246 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6247 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6248 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6249 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6250 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6251 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
6252
6253 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
6254 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
6255
6256 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6257 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6258 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6259 permanently REMOVED.
6260
6261 * REMOVED configurations and files
6262
6263 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6264 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6265 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
6266 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6267 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
6268 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
6269
6270 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
6271
6272 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
6273 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
6274 present.
6275
6276 * Other news:
6277
6278 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
6279
6280 * The MI enabled by default.
6281
6282 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
6283 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
6284 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
6285 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
6286 which is now deprecated.
6287
6288 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
6289
6290 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
6291 main features are supported:
6292
6293 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
6294
6295 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
6296 extension;
6297
6298 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
6299
6300 - a Pascal expression parser.
6301
6302 However, some important features are not yet supported.
6303
6304 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
6305
6306 - there are some problems with boolean types;
6307
6308 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
6309 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
6310
6311 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
6312
6313 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
6314
6315 * Changes in completion.
6316
6317 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
6318 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
6319 users expect at the shell prompt.
6320
6321 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
6322 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
6323 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
6324 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
6325 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
6326 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
6327 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
6328
6329 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
6330
6331 * New platform-independent commands:
6332
6333 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
6334 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
6335 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
6336
6337 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
6338
6339 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
6340 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
6341 many threads as your system allows you to have.
6342
6343 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
6344
6345 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
6346 multi-threaded programs though.
6347
6348 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
6349
6350 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
6351
6352 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
6353 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
6354 supported.)
6355
6356 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
6357
6358 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
6359 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
6360 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
6361 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
6362 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
6363 registers.
6364
6365 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
6366 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
6367 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
6368
6369 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
6370
6371 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
6372 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
6373
6374 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
6375 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
6376 IDT.
6377
6378 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
6379 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
6380 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
6381 a given linear address.
6382
6383 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
6384 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
6385 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
6386
6387 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
6388
6389 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
6390
6391 * Changes in documentation.
6392
6393 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
6394 Documentation License.
6395
6396 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6397 manual.
6398
6399 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
6400
6401 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6402 manual.
6403
6404 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
6405 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
6406 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
6407
6408 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
6409
6410 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
6411 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
6412 contents of this file.
6413
6414 * gdba.el deleted
6415
6416 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
6417
6418 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
6419
6420 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
6421
6422 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
6423 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
6424 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
6425 greater level of detail.
6426
6427 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
6428
6429 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
6430 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
6431 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
6432 written.
6433
6434 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
6435
6436 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
6437 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
6438 machines ``out of the box''.
6439
6440 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
6441 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
6442 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
6443 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
6444 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
6445
6446 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
6447 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
6448 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
6449 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
6450 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
6451
6452 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
6453 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
6454 also works.
6455
6456 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
6457 GDB.
6458
6459 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
6460 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
6461 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
6462 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
6463
6464 * New native configurations
6465
6466 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
6467 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6468
6469 * New targets
6470
6471 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
6472 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
6473 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
6474 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6475
6476 * OBSOLETE configurations
6477
6478 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6479 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6480 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
6481 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6482 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
6483
6484 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6485 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6486 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6487 be permanently REMOVED.
6488
6489 * Gould support removed
6490
6491 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
6492
6493 * New features for SVR4
6494
6495 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
6496 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
6497 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
6498
6499 * Many C++ enhancements
6500
6501 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
6502 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
6503
6504 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
6505
6506 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
6507 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
6508 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
6509 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
6510
6511 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
6512 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
6513
6514 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6515
6516 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6517 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6518 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6519
6520 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6521 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6522
6523 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6524
6525 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6526 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6527 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6528
6529 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6530
6531 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6532 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6533 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6534
6535 * ``apropos'' command added.
6536
6537 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6538 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6539 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6540
6541 * New MI interface
6542
6543 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6544 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6545 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6546 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6547 enabled by configuring with:
6548
6549 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6550
6551 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6552
6553 * New native configurations
6554
6555 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6556 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6557 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6558
6559 * New targets
6560
6561 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6562 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6563 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6564
6565 * OBSOLETE configurations
6566
6567 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6568
6569 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6570 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6571 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6572 be permanently REMOVED.
6573
6574 * ANSI/ISO C
6575
6576 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6577 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6578 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6579 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6580 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6581 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6582 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6583 already.
6584
6585 * Readline 2.2
6586
6587 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6588
6589 * set extension-language
6590
6591 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6592 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6593 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6594 set extension-language .c c++
6595 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6596 and their associated languages.
6597
6598 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6599
6600 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6601 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6602 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6603
6604 set processor NAME
6605
6606 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6607 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6608
6609 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6610 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6611 403 IBM PowerPC 403
6612 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6613 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6614 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6615 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6616 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6617 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6618 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6619 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6620
6621 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6622 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6623 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6624 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6625
6626 * HP-UX support
6627
6628 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6629 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6630 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6631 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6632 for xdb and dbx commands.
6633
6634 * Catchpoints
6635
6636 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6637 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6638 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6639
6640 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6641 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6642 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6643
6644 * Debugging across forks
6645
6646 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6647 in the inferior.
6648
6649 * TUI
6650
6651 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6652 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6653 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6654
6655 * GDB remote protocol additions
6656
6657 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6658 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6659 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6660 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6661
6662 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6663 full 64-bit address. The command
6664
6665 set remoteaddresssize 32
6666
6667 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6668 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6669 will be discarded.
6670
6671 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6672 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6673
6674 maint packet heythere
6675
6676 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6677 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6678 time.
6679
6680 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6681 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6682 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6683
6684 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6685
6686 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6687 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6688 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6689
6690 * mask-address variable for Mips
6691
6692 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6693 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6694 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6695
6696 * Higher serial baud rates
6697
6698 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6699 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6700 to achieve all of these rates.)
6701
6702 * i960 simulator
6703
6704 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6705 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6706
6707
6708 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6709
6710 * New native configurations
6711
6712 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6713 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6714 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6715 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6716 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6717 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6718 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6719
6720 * New targets
6721
6722 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6723 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6724 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6725 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6726 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6727 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6728 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6729 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6730 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6731 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6732 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6733
6734 * New debugging protocols
6735
6736 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6737 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6738 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6739 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6740 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6741 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6742
6743 * DWARF 2
6744
6745 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6746 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6747 information.
6748
6749 * Java frontend
6750
6751 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6752 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6753
6754 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6755
6756 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6757 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6758 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6759
6760 * Live range splitting
6761
6762 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6763 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6764 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6765
6766 * Hurd support
6767
6768 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6769 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6770
6771 * ARM Thumb support
6772
6773 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6774 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6775 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6776 accordingly.
6777
6778 * MIPS16 support
6779
6780 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6781 instruction set.
6782
6783 * Overlay support
6784
6785 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6786 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6787 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6788 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6789 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6790 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6791
6792 * info symbol
6793
6794 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6795 the symbol at the specified address.
6796
6797 * Trace support
6798
6799 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6800 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6801 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6802 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6803 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6804
6805 * MIPS simulator
6806
6807 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6808 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6809 of most MIPS variants.
6810
6811 * Sparc simulator
6812
6813 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6814 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6815 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6816
6817 * set architecture
6818
6819 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6820 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6821 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6822 the possible architectures.
6823
6824 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6825
6826 * New native configurations
6827
6828 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6829 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6830 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6831 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6832 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6833 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6834
6835 * New targets
6836
6837 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6838 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6839 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6840 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6841 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6842 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6843 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6844
6845 * PowerPC simulator
6846
6847 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6848 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6849 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6850 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6851 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6852
6853 * Solaris 2.5
6854
6855 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6856
6857 * Windows 95/NT native
6858
6859 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6860 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6861 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6862 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6863 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6864
6865 * dont-repeat command
6866
6867 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6868 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6869 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6870 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6871
6872 * Send break instead of ^C
6873
6874 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6875 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6876 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6877
6878 * Remote protocol timeout
6879
6880 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6881 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6882 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6883
6884 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6885
6886 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6887 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6888 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6889 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6890 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6891
6892 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6893 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6894 automatically on hpux10.
6895
6896 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6897
6898 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6899
6900 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6901
6902 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6903 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6904 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6905 every character. The default value is 1050.
6906
6907 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6908
6909 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6910 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6911 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6912 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6913 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6914 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6915
6916 * Speedups for remote debugging
6917
6918 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6919 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6920 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6921
6922 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6923
6924 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6925 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6926
6927 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6928
6929 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6930
6931 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6932 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6933
6934 * Remote targets use caching
6935
6936 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6937 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6938 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6939 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6940 off' turns the data cache off.
6941
6942 * Remote targets may have threads
6943
6944 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6945 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6946 gdb/remote.c for details.
6947
6948 * NetROM support
6949
6950 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6951 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6952 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6953 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6954 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6955 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6956 sequence is something like
6957
6958 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6959 load <prog>
6960 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6961
6962 * Macintosh host
6963
6964 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6965 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6966 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6967 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6968 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6969 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6970 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6971 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6972
6973 * Autoconf
6974
6975 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6976 but does simplify configuration and building.
6977
6978 * hpux10
6979
6980 GDB now supports hpux10.
6981
6982 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6983
6984 * New native configurations
6985
6986 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6987 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6988 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6989 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6990
6991 * New targets
6992
6993 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6994 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6995 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6996 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6997 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6998
6999 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
7000
7001 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
7002 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
7003 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
7004 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
7005 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
7006
7007 * Arguments to user-defined commands
7008
7009 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
7010 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
7011 trivial example:
7012 define adder
7013 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
7014
7015 To execute the command use:
7016 adder 1 2 3
7017
7018 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
7019 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
7020 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
7021
7022 * New `if' and `while' commands
7023
7024 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
7025 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
7026 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
7027 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
7028 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
7029 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
7030 if the expression is zero.
7031
7032 * Fortran source language mode
7033
7034 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
7035 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
7036 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
7037 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
7038 Fortran compilers.
7039
7040 * Better HPUX support
7041
7042 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
7043 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
7044 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
7045 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
7046 that behavior do the following before running the program:
7047
7048 adb -w a.out
7049 __dld_flags?W 0x5
7050 control-d
7051
7052 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
7053 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
7054
7055 adb -w a.out
7056 __dld_flags?W 0x4
7057 control-d
7058
7059 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
7060 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
7061 external linkage.
7062
7063 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
7064 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
7065
7066 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
7067
7068 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
7069 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
7070 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
7071 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
7072 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
7073 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
7074
7075 * New DOS host serial code
7076
7077 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
7078 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
7079 a PC's serial port.
7080
7081 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
7082
7083 * New "complete" command
7084
7085 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
7086 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
7087
7088 * Trailing space optional in prompt
7089
7090 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
7091 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
7092
7093 * Breakpoint hit counts
7094
7095 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
7096 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
7097 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
7098 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
7099 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
7100 that breakpoint.
7101
7102 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
7103
7104 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
7105 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
7106 arrays actually contain only short strings.
7107
7108 * Shared library breakpoints
7109
7110 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
7111 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
7112
7113 * Hardware watchpoints
7114
7115 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
7116 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
7117
7118 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
7119
7120 * Annotations
7121
7122 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
7123 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
7124
7125 * Improved Irix 5 support
7126
7127 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
7128
7129 * Improved HPPA support
7130
7131 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
7132
7133 * New native configurations
7134
7135 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
7136 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
7137 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
7138 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
7139
7140 * New targets
7141
7142 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7143 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
7144 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
7145
7146 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
7147
7148 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
7149 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
7150
7151 * Fixes
7152
7153 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
7154 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
7155
7156 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
7157
7158 * Irix 5 is now supported
7159
7160 * HPPA support
7161
7162 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
7163 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
7164 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
7165 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
7166 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
7167
7168
7169 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
7170
7171 * User visible changes:
7172
7173 * Remote Debugging
7174
7175 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
7176 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
7177 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
7178 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
7179 debugging info for the mips target).
7180
7181 * DEC Alpha native support
7182
7183 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
7184 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
7185 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
7186 Alpha-specific notes.
7187
7188 * Preliminary thread implementation
7189
7190 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
7191
7192 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
7193
7194 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
7195 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
7196 for details).
7197
7198 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
7199
7200 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
7201 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
7202 call methods, ...etc.
7203
7204 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
7205
7206 * User visible changes:
7207
7208 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
7209 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
7210 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
7211 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
7212
7213 Filename completion now works.
7214
7215 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
7216 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
7217 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
7218
7219 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
7220 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
7221 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
7222 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
7223 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
7224
7225 * DEC alpha support
7226
7227 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
7228 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
7229
7230
7231 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
7232
7233 * Testsuite
7234
7235 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
7236 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
7237 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
7238
7239 * C++ demangling
7240
7241 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
7242 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
7243 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
7244 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
7245 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
7246
7247 * Simulators
7248
7249 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
7250 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
7251 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
7252
7253 * New targets supported
7254
7255 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7256 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7257 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
7258 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7259 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
7260
7261 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
7262 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
7263 GO32 memory extender.
7264
7265 * New remote protocols
7266
7267 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
7268
7269 * New source languages supported
7270
7271 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
7272 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
7273 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
7274
7275
7276 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
7277
7278 * HP Precision Architecture supported
7279
7280 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
7281 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
7282 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
7283 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
7284 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
7285 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
7286
7287 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
7288
7289 * Faster and better demangling
7290
7291 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
7292 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
7293 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
7294 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
7295 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
7296 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
7297 symbol lookups.
7298
7299 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
7300 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
7301 compiler does not actually implement.
7302
7303 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
7304
7305 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
7306 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
7307 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
7308 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
7309 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
7310 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
7311 fix.
7312
7313 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
7314 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
7315
7316 * Improved configure script
7317
7318 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
7319 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
7320 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
7321 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
7322
7323 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
7324 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
7325 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
7326 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
7327 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
7328 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
7329
7330 * Documentation improvements
7331
7332 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
7333 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
7334 before submitting changes.
7335
7336 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
7337 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
7338 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
7339 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
7340 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
7341
7342 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
7343 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
7344 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
7345 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
7346 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
7347 around this problem.
7348
7349 * New features
7350
7351 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
7352 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
7353 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
7354 the target program.
7355
7356 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
7357 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
7358
7359 * New native hosts supported
7360
7361 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
7362 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
7363
7364 * New targets supported
7365
7366 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
7367
7368 * New file formats supported
7369
7370 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
7371 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
7372
7373 * Major bug fixes
7374
7375 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
7376
7377 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
7378 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
7379
7380 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
7381 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
7382 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
7383
7384 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
7385 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
7386
7387 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
7388 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
7389 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
7390 libraries.
7391
7392 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
7393 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
7394 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
7395 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
7396 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
7397
7398 * Internal improvements
7399
7400 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
7401 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
7402
7403 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
7404 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
7405 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
7406 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
7407 shared code that handles any of them.
7408
7409 * New command line options
7410
7411 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
7412
7413 * Mmalloc licensing
7414
7415 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
7416 General Public License.
7417
7418 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
7419
7420 * Host/native/target split
7421
7422 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
7423 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
7424 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
7425 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
7426 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
7427
7428 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
7429 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
7430 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
7431 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
7432 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
7433 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
7434 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
7435
7436 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
7437 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
7438 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
7439
7440 * New hosts supported
7441
7442 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
7443 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7444 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
7445
7446 * New targets supported
7447
7448 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7449 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
7450
7451 * New native hosts supported
7452
7453 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7454 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
7455 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
7456
7457 * New file formats supported
7458
7459 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
7460 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
7461 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
7462
7463 * New commands
7464
7465 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
7466 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
7467 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
7468
7469 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
7470
7471 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
7472 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
7473 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
7474 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
7475
7476 * C++ improvements
7477
7478 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
7479 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
7480 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
7481
7482 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
7483
7484 * Major bug fixes
7485
7486 The crash that occurred when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
7487 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
7488 by the compiler.
7489
7490 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
7491 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
7492
7493 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
7494 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
7495 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
7496 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
7497 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
7498 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
7499
7500 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
7501 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
7502 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
7503 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
7504
7505 * AMD 29k support
7506
7507 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
7508 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
7509 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
7510 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
7511 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
7512
7513 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
7514 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7515 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7516 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7517
7518 * Remote interfaces
7519
7520 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7521 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7522 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7523 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7524 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7525 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7526 each instruction being stepped through.
7527
7528 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7529 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7530
7531 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7532 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7533 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7534 processor with a serial port.
7535
7536 * Configuration
7537
7538 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7539 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7540 supported, and what files each one uses.
7541
7542 * Library changes
7543
7544 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7545 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7546 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7547 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7548
7549 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7550 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7551 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7552 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7553
7554 * Documentation
7555
7556 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7557 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7558 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7559 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7560 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7561 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7562
7563 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7564
7565
7566 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7567
7568 * Better support for C++ function names
7569
7570 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7571 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7572 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7573 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7574 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7575
7576 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7577 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7578 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7579 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7580 for the list of formats.
7581
7582 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7583
7584 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7585 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7586 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7587 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compiling gdb/symtab.c. The
7588 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7589 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7590 this problem.)
7591
7592 * New 'maintenance' command
7593
7594 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7595 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7596 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7597
7598 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7599 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7600 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7601 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7602 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7603 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7604
7605 The following commands are new:
7606
7607 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7608 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7609 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7610
7611 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7612
7613 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7614 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7615 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7616 read after argv processing.
7617
7618 * New hosts supported
7619
7620 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7621
7622 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7623
7624 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7625 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7626 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7627 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7628 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7629 It costs extra.
7630
7631 * New targets supported
7632
7633 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7634
7635 * More smarts about finding #include files
7636
7637 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7638 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7639 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7640 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7641 the one that contains your sources.
7642
7643 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7644 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7645 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7646
7647 * Interesting infernals change
7648
7649 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7650 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7651 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7652 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7653
7654 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7655
7656 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7657 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7658 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7659
7660 See the ChangeLog for details.
7661
7662 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7663
7664 * New machines supported (host and target)
7665
7666 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7667
7668 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7669
7670 * New malloc package
7671
7672 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7673 Mmalloc is capable of handling multiple heaps of memory. It is also
7674 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7675 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7676 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7677 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7678
7679 * info proc
7680
7681 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7682 'help info proc' for details.
7683
7684 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7685
7686 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7687 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7688 possible.
7689
7690 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7691
7692 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7693 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7694 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7695 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7696 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7697 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7698
7699 * Cross byte order fixes
7700
7701 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7702 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7703
7704 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7705
7706 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7707 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7708 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7709 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7710 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7711 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7712 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7713 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7714 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7715 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7716
7717 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7718 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7719 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7720 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7721
7722 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7723 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7724 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7725 use is:
7726
7727 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7728
7729 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7730 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7731 shared across multiple host platforms.
7732
7733 * longjmp() handling
7734
7735 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7736 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7737 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7738 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7739
7740 * Solaris 2.0
7741
7742 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7743 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7744 reading symbols.
7745
7746 * Bug fixes
7747
7748 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7749 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7750 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7751
7752 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7753
7754 * New machines supported (host and target)
7755
7756 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7757 (except core files)
7758 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7759 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7760
7761 * New machines supported (target)
7762
7763 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7764
7765 * C++ support
7766
7767 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7768 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7769 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7770
7771 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7772 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7773 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7774 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7775 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7776 released.
7777
7778 * New features for SVR4
7779
7780 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7781 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7782 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7783
7784 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7785 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7786 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7787
7788 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7789 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7790
7791 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7792
7793 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7794 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7795 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7796 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7797 same code linked statically.
7798
7799 * New Getopt
7800
7801 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7802 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7803 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7804 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7805 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7806 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7807
7808 * Bugs fixed
7809
7810 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7811 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7812 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7813
7814
7815 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7816
7817 * New machines supported (host and target)
7818
7819 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7820 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7821 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7822
7823 * Almost SCO Unix support
7824
7825 We had hoped to support:
7826 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7827 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7828 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7829 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7830
7831 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7832
7833 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7834 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7835 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7836 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7837 reqired (if any).
7838
7839 * New Readline
7840
7841 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7842 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7843 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7844
7845 * Bugs fixed
7846
7847 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7848 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7849 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7850
7851 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7852
7853 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7854 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7855 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7856
7857 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7858 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7859 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7860 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7861 version 2.
7862
7863 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7864 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7865 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7866 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7867 situation somewhat.
7868
7869 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7870 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7871 methods.
7872
7873 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7874 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7875 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7876
7877
7878 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7879
7880 * Improved configuration
7881
7882 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7883 Porting BFD is simpler.
7884
7885 * Stepping improved
7886
7887 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7888 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7889 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7890 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7891
7892 * Bug fixing
7893
7894 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7895
7896 * New host supported (not target)
7897
7898 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7899
7900
7901 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7902
7903 * Multiple source language support
7904
7905 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7906 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7907 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7908 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7909 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7910 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7911
7912 * GDB and Modula-2
7913
7914 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7915 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7916 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7917 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7918
7919 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7920 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7921 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7922
7923 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7924 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7925
7926 * set write on/off
7927
7928 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7929 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7930 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7931 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7932 effect immediately.
7933
7934 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7935
7936 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7937 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7938 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7939 examining core files.
7940
7941 * set listsize
7942
7943 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7944 The default is 10.
7945
7946 * New machines supported (host and target)
7947
7948 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7949 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7950 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7951
7952 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7953
7954 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7955
7956 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7957
7958 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7959 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7960 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7961
7962 * New remote interfaces
7963
7964 AMD 29000 Adapt
7965 AMD 29000 Minimon
7966
7967
7968 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7969
7970 * New Facilities
7971
7972 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7973
7974 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7975 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7976 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7977 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7978 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7979 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7980 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7981 stub on the target system.
7982
7983 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7984
7985 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7986 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7987 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7988
7989 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7990 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7991
7992
7993 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7994
7995 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7996 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7997
7998 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7999 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
8000 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
8001
8002 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
8003 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
8004 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
8005 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
8006
8007 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
8008 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
8009 it is already running. Default is ON.
8010
8011 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
8012 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
8013 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
8014 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
8015 Default is ON.
8016
8017 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
8018 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
8019 or the value of the environment variable
8020 GDBHISTFILE.
8021
8022 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
8023 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
8024 HISTSIZE.
8025
8026 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
8027 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
8028 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
8029
8030 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
8031 history expansion will be performed on
8032 command line input. The default is OFF.
8033
8034 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
8035 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
8036 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
8037
8038 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
8039 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
8040 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8041 variable TERM.
8042
8043 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
8044 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
8045 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8046 variable TERM.
8047
8048 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
8049 ``set width'' instead.
8050
8051 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
8052 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
8053 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
8054 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
8055
8056 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
8057 is OFF.
8058
8059 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
8060 "raw" form if off.
8061
8062 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
8063 like instructions.
8064
8065 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
8066
8067
8068 * Support for Epoch Environment.
8069
8070 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
8071 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
8072 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
8073 window.
8074
8075
8076 * Support for Shared Libraries
8077
8078 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
8079 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
8080 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
8081 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
8082 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
8083 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
8084 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
8085 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
8086
8087 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
8088 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
8089 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
8090
8091 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
8092
8093
8094 * Watchpoints
8095
8096 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
8097 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
8098 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
8099 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
8100 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
8101 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
8102
8103 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
8104
8105 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
8106
8107 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8108 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8109 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8110
8111
8112 * C++ multiple inheritance
8113
8114 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
8115 for C++ programs.
8116
8117 * C++ exception handling
8118
8119 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
8120 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
8121 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
8122 handler's context).
8123
8124 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
8125 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
8126 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
8127
8128 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
8129 current stack frame.
8130
8131
8132 * Minor command changes
8133
8134 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
8135 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
8136 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
8137
8138 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
8139 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
8140 frames without printing.
8141
8142 * New directory command
8143
8144 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
8145 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
8146 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
8147 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
8148 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
8149
8150 * Configuring GDB for compilation
8151
8152 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
8153 for more details.
8154
8155 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
8156 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
8157 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
8158 where the program that you are debugging will run.