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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 10
5
6 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
7 for the ARC target.
8
9 * GDB now supports general memory tagging functionality if the underlying
10 architecture supports the proper primitives and hooks. Currently this is
11 enabled only for AArch64 MTE.
12
13 This includes:
14
15 - Additional information when the inferior crashes with a SIGSEGV caused by
16 a memory tag violation.
17
18 - A new modifier 'm' for the "x" command, which displays allocation tags for a
19 particular memory range.
20
21 - Display of memory tag mismatches by "print", for addresses and
22 pointers, if memory tagging is supported by the architecture.
23
24 * Building GDB now requires GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
25 Library).
26
27 * MI changes
28
29 ** '-break-insert --qualified' and '-dprintf-insert --qualified'
30
31 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
32 new "--qualified" option that makes GDB interpret a specified
33 function name as a complete fully-qualified name. This is the
34 equivalent of the CLI's "break -qualified" and "dprintf
35 -qualified".
36
37 ** '-break-insert --force-condition' and '-dprintf-insert --force-condition'
38
39 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
40 '--force-condition' flag to forcibly define a condition even when
41 the condition is invalid at all locations of the breakpoint. This
42 is equivalent to the '-force-condition' flag of the CLI's "break"
43 command.
44
45 ** '-break-condition --force'
46
47 The MI -break-condition command now supports a '--force' flag to
48 forcibly define a condition even when the condition is invalid at
49 all locations of the selected breakpoint. This is equivalent to
50 the '-force' flag of the CLI's "cond" command.
51
52 * GDB now supports core file debugging for x86_64 Cygwin programs.
53
54 * GDB will now look for the .gdbinit file in a config directory before
55 looking for ~/.gdbinit. The file is searched for in the following
56 locations: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.config/gdb/gdbinit,
57 $HOME/.gdbinit. On Apple hosts the search order is instead:
58 $HOME/Library/Preferences/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.gdbinit.
59
60 * GDB now supports fixed point types which are described in DWARF
61 as base types with a fixed-point encoding. Additionally, support
62 for the DW_AT_GNU_numerator and DW_AT_GNU_denominator has also
63 been added.
64
65 For Ada, this allows support for fixed point types without requiring
66 the use of the GNAT encoding (based on information added to the type's
67 name following a GNAT-specific format).
68
69 * GDB will now load and process commands from ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit
70 or ~/.gdbearlyinit if these files are present. These files are
71 processed earlier than any of the other initialization files and
72 can affect parts of GDB's startup that previously had already been
73 completed before the initialization files were read, for example
74 styling of the initial GDB greeting.
75
76 * GDB now has two new options "--early-init-command" and
77 "--early-init-eval-command" with corresponding short options "-eix"
78 and "-eiex" that allow options (that would normally appear in a
79 gdbearlyinit file) to be passed on the command line.
80
81 * New commands
82
83 set debug event-loop
84 show debug event-loop
85 Control the display of debug output about GDB's event loop.
86
87 set print memory-tag-violations
88 show print memory-tag-violations
89 Control whether to display additional information about memory tag violations
90 when printing pointers and addresses. Architecture support for memory
91 tagging is required for this option to have an effect.
92
93 maintenance flush symbol-cache
94 maintenance flush register-cache
95 These new commands are equivalent to the already existing commands
96 'maintenance flush-symbol-cache' and 'flushregs' respectively.
97
98 maintenance flush dcache
99 A new command to flush the dcache.
100
101 maintenance info target-sections
102 Print GDB's internal target sections table.
103
104 memory-tag show-logical-tag POINTER
105 Print the logical tag for POINTER.
106 memory-tag with-logical-tag POINTER TAG
107 Print POINTER with logical tag TAG.
108 memory-tag show-allocation-tag ADDRESS
109 Print the allocation tag for ADDRESS.
110 memory-tag set-allocation-tag ADDRESS LENGTH TAGS
111 Set the allocation tag for [ADDRESS, ADDRESS + LENGTH) to TAGS.
112 memory-tag check POINTER
113 Validate that POINTER's logical tag matches the allocation tag.
114
115 set startup-quietly on|off
116 show startup-quietly
117 When 'on', this causes GDB to act as if "-silent" were passed on the
118 command line. This command needs to be added to an early
119 initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to
120 affect GDB.
121
122 set print type hex on|off
123 show print type hex
124 When 'on', the 'ptype' command uses hexadecimal notation to print sizes
125 and offsets of struct members. When 'off', decimal notation is used.
126
127 set python ignore-environment on|off
128 show python ignore-environment
129 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to ignore any
130 environment variables that would otherwise affect how Python
131 behaves. This command needs to be added to an early initialization
132 file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to affect GDB.
133
134 set python dont-write-bytecode auto|on|off
135 show python dont-write-bytecode
136 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to not write any
137 byte-code (.pyc files) to disk. This command needs to be added to
138 an early initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in
139 order to affect GDB. When 'off' byte-code will always be written.
140 When set to 'auto' (the default) Python will check the
141 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.
142
143 * Changed commands
144
145 break [PROBE_MODIFIER] [LOCATION] [thread THREADNUM]
146 [-force-condition] [if CONDITION]
147 This command would previously refuse setting a breakpoint if the
148 CONDITION expression is invalid at a location. It now accepts and
149 defines the breakpoint if there is at least one location at which
150 the CONDITION is valid. The locations for which the CONDITION is
151 invalid, are automatically disabled. If CONDITION is invalid at all
152 of the locations, setting the breakpoint is still rejected. However,
153 the '-force-condition' flag can be used in this case for forcing GDB to
154 define the breakpoint, making all the current locations automatically
155 disabled. This may be useful if the user knows the condition will
156 become meaningful at a future location, e.g. due to a shared library
157 load.
158
159 condition [-force] N COND
160 The behavior of this command is changed the same way for the 'break'
161 command as explained above. The '-force' flag can be used to force
162 GDB into defining the condition even when COND is invalid for all the
163 current locations of breakpoint N.
164
165 flushregs
166 maintenance flush-symbol-cache
167 These commands are deprecated in favor of the new commands
168 'maintenance flush register-cache' and 'maintenance flush
169 symbol-cache' respectively.
170
171 set style version foreground COLOR
172 set style version background COLOR
173 set style version intensity VALUE
174 Control the styling of GDB's version number text.
175
176 inferior [ID]
177 When the ID parameter is omitted, then this command prints information
178 about the current inferior. When the ID parameter is present, the
179 behavior of the command is unchanged and have the inferior ID become
180 the current inferior.
181
182 maintenance info sections
183 The ALLOBJ keyword has been replaced with an -all-objects command
184 line flag. It is now possible to filter which sections are printed
185 even when -all-objects is passed.
186
187 ptype[/FLAGS] TYPE | EXPRESSION
188 The 'ptype' command has two new flags. When '/x' is set, hexadecimal
189 notation is used when printing sizes and offsets of struct members.
190 When '/d' is set, decimal notation is used when printing sizes and
191 offsets of struct members. Default behavior is given by 'show print
192 type hex'.
193
194 * Removed targets and native configurations
195
196 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
197
198 * New remote packets
199
200 qMemTags
201 Request the remote to send allocation tags for a particular memory range.
202 QMemTags
203 Request the remote to store the specified allocation tags to the requested
204 memory range.
205
206 * Guile API
207
208 ** Improved support for rvalue reference values:
209 TYPE_CODE_RVALUE_REF is now exported as part of the API and the
210 value-referenced-value procedure now handles rvalue reference
211 values.
212
213 ** New procedures for obtaining value variants:
214 value-reference-value, value-rvalue-reference-value and
215 value-const-value.
216
217 * Python API
218
219 ** Inferior objects now contain a read-only 'connection_num' attribute that
220 gives the connection number as seen in 'info connections' and
221 'info inferiors'.
222
223 *** Changes in GDB 10
224
225 * There are new feature names for ARC targets: "org.gnu.gdb.arc.core"
226 and "org.gnu.gdb.arc.aux". The old names are still supported but
227 must be considered obsolete. They will be deprecated after some
228 grace period.
229
230 * Help and apropos commands will now show the documentation of a
231 command only once, even if that command has one or more aliases.
232 These commands now show the command name, then all of its aliases,
233 and finally the description of the command.
234
235 * 'help aliases' now shows only the user defined aliases. GDB predefined
236 aliases are shown together with their aliased command.
237
238 * GDB now supports debuginfod, an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF
239 debugging information as well as source code.
240
241 When built with debuginfod, GDB can automatically query debuginfod
242 servers for the separate debug files and source code of the executable
243 being debugged.
244
245 To build GDB with debuginfod, pass --with-debuginfod to configure (this
246 requires libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library).
247
248 debuginfod is distributed with elfutils, starting with version 0.178.
249
250 You can get the latest version from https://sourceware.org/elfutils.
251
252 * Multi-target debugging support
253
254 GDB now supports debugging multiple target connections
255 simultaneously. For example, you can now have each inferior
256 connected to different remote servers running in different machines,
257 or have one inferior debugging a local native process, an inferior
258 debugging a core dump, etc.
259
260 This support is experimental and comes with some limitations -- you
261 can only resume multiple targets simultaneously if all targets
262 support non-stop mode, and all remote stubs or servers must support
263 the same set of remote protocol features exactly. See also "info
264 connections" and "add-inferior -no-connection" below, and "maint set
265 target-non-stop" in the user manual.
266
267 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
268
269 ** GDBserver is now supported on ARC GNU/Linux.
270
271 ** GDBserver is now supported on RISC-V GNU/Linux.
272
273 ** GDBserver no longer supports these host triplets:
274
275 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
276 powerpc-*-lynxos*
277 i[34567]86-*-nto*
278 bfin-*-*linux*
279 crisv32-*-linux*
280 cris-*-linux*
281 m32r*-*-linux*
282 tilegx-*-linux*
283 arm*-*-mingw32ce*
284 i[34567]86-*-mingw32ce*
285
286 * Debugging MS-Windows processes now sets $_exitsignal when the
287 inferior is terminated by a signal, instead of setting $_exitcode.
288
289 * Multithreaded symbol loading has now been enabled by default on systems
290 that support it (see entry for GDB 9, below), providing faster
291 performance for programs with many symbols.
292
293 * The $_siginfo convenience variable now also works on Windows targets,
294 and will display the EXCEPTION_RECORD of the last handled exception.
295
296 * TUI windows can now be arranged horizontally.
297
298 * The command history filename can now be set to the empty string
299 either using 'set history filename' or by setting 'GDBHISTFILE=' in
300 the environment. The effect of setting this filename to the empty
301 string is that GDB will not try to load any previous command
302 history.
303
304 * On Windows targets, it is now possible to debug 32-bit programs with a
305 64-bit GDB.
306
307 * New commands
308
309 set exec-file-mismatch -- Set exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
310 show exec-file-mismatch -- Show exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
311 Set or show the option 'exec-file-mismatch'. When GDB attaches to a
312 running process, this new option indicates whether to detect
313 a mismatch between the current executable file loaded by GDB and the
314 executable file used to start the process. If 'ask', the default,
315 display a warning and ask the user whether to load the process
316 executable file; if 'warn', just display a warning; if 'off', don't
317 attempt to detect a mismatch.
318
319 tui new-layout NAME WINDOW WEIGHT [WINDOW WEIGHT]...
320 Define a new TUI layout, specifying its name and the windows that
321 will be displayed.
322
323 maintenance print xml-tdesc [FILE]
324 Prints the current target description as an XML document. If the
325 optional FILE is provided (which is an XML target description) then
326 the target description is read from FILE into GDB, and then
327 reprinted.
328
329 maintenance print core-file-backed-mappings
330 Prints file-backed mappings loaded from a core file's note section.
331 Output is expected to be similar to that of "info proc mappings".
332
333 set debug fortran-array-slicing on|off
334 show debug fortran-array-slicing
335 Print debugging when taking slices of Fortran arrays.
336
337 set fortran repack-array-slices on|off
338 show fortran repack-array-slices
339 When taking slices from Fortran arrays and strings, if the slice is
340 non-contiguous within the original value then, when this option is
341 on, the new value will be repacked into a single contiguous value.
342 When this option is off, then the value returned will consist of a
343 descriptor that describes the slice within the memory of the
344 original parent value.
345
346 * Changed commands
347
348 alias [-a] [--] ALIAS = COMMAND [DEFAULT-ARGS...]
349 The alias command can now specify default args for an alias.
350 GDB automatically prepends the alias default args to the argument list
351 provided explicitly by the user.
352 For example, to have a backtrace with full details, you can define
353 an alias 'bt_ALL' as
354 'alias bt_ALL = backtrace -entry-values both -frame-arg all
355 -past-main -past-entry -full'.
356 Alias default arguments can also use a set of nested 'with' commands,
357 e.g. 'alias pp10 = with print pretty -- with print elem 10 -- print'
358 defines the alias pp10 that will pretty print a maximum of 10 elements
359 of the given expression (if the expression is an array).
360
361 * New targets
362
363 GNU/Linux/RISC-V (gdbserver) riscv*-*-linux*
364 BPF bpf-unknown-none
365
366 * Python API
367
368 ** gdb.register_window_type can be used to implement new TUI windows
369 in Python.
370
371 ** Dynamic types can now be queried. gdb.Type has a new attribute,
372 "dynamic", and gdb.Type.sizeof can be None for a dynamic type. A
373 field of a dynamic type may have None for its "bitpos" attribute
374 as well.
375
376 ** Commands written in Python can be in the "TUI" help class by
377 registering with the new constant gdb.COMMAND_TUI.
378
379 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.architecture () to retrieve the
380 architecture of the pending frame.
381
382 ** New gdb.Architecture.registers method that returns a
383 gdb.RegisterDescriptorIterator object, an iterator that returns
384 gdb.RegisterDescriptor objects. The new RegisterDescriptor is a
385 way to query the registers available for an architecture.
386
387 ** New gdb.Architecture.register_groups method that returns a
388 gdb.RegisterGroupIterator object, an iterator that returns
389 gdb.RegisterGroup objects. The new RegisterGroup is a way to
390 discover the available register groups.
391
392 * Guile API
393
394 ** GDB can now be built with GNU Guile 3.0 and 2.2 in addition to 2.0.
395
396 ** Procedures 'memory-port-read-buffer-size',
397 'set-memory-port-read-buffer-size!', 'memory-port-write-buffer-size',
398 and 'set-memory-port-write-buffer-size!' are deprecated. When
399 using Guile 2.2 and later, users who need to control the size of
400 a memory port's internal buffer can use the 'setvbuf' procedure.
401
402 *** Changes in GDB 9
403
404 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
405
406 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
407 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
408 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
409 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
410 such as in system-wide init files.
411
412 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
413 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
414 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
415 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
416 current GDB settings.
417
418 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
419 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
420 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
421 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
422
423 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
424 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
425 postfix [PAC].
426
427 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
428 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
429
430 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
431 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
432 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
433
434 * The command define-prefix can now define user defined prefix commands.
435 User defined commands can now be defined using these user defined prefix
436 commands.
437
438 * Command names can now use the . character.
439
440 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
441
442 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
443 messages.
444
445 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
446
447 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
448 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
449
450 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
451 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
452 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
453
454 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
455
456 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
457 not visible in the current scope.
458
459 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
460 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
461 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
462 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
463 compiled with support for that language.
464
465 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
466 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
467 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
468
469 * Python API
470
471 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
472 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
473 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
474 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
475 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
476
477 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
478 type was defined in.
479
480 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
481 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
482 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
483 is given.
484
485 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
486 symbols with static linkage.
487
488 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
489 all static symbols with static linkage.
490
491 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
492 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
493
494 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
495 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
496
497 * New commands
498
499 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
500 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
501 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
502 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
503 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
504 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
505 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
506
507 define-prefix COMMAND
508 Define or mark a command as a user-defined prefix command.
509
510 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
511 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
512 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
513 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
514 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
515 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
516 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
517 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
518 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
519 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
520 of array elements to print.
521
522 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
523 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
524
525 set may-call-functions [on|off]
526 show may-call-functions
527 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
528 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
529 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
530 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
531 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
532 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
533 in the program.
534
535 set print finish [on|off]
536 show print finish
537 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
538 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
539 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
540 default is `on'.
541
542 set print max-depth
543 show print max-depth
544 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
545 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
546 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
547 the old behavior back.
548
549 set print raw-values [on|off]
550 show print raw-values
551 By default, GDB applies the enabled pretty printers when printing a
552 value. This allows to ignore the enabled pretty printers for a series
553 of commands. The default is 'off'.
554
555 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
556 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
557 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
558
559 set style title foreground COLOR
560 set style title background COLOR
561 set style title intensity VALUE
562 Control the styling of titles.
563
564 set style highlight foreground COLOR
565 set style highlight background COLOR
566 set style highlight intensity VALUE
567 Control the styling of highlightings.
568
569 maint set worker-threads
570 maint show worker-threads
571 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
572 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
573 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
574 the names of linker symbols.
575
576 set style tui-border foreground COLOR
577 set style tui-border background COLOR
578 Control the styling of TUI borders.
579
580 set style tui-active-border foreground COLOR
581 set style tui-active-border background COLOR
582 Control the styling of the active TUI border.
583
584 maint set test-settings KIND
585 maint show test-settings KIND
586 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
587 infrastructure.
588
589 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
590 maint show tui-resize-message
591 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
592 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
593 TUI.
594
595 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
596 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
597 show print frame-info
598 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
599 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
600 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
601 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
602
603 set tui compact-source
604 show tui compact-source
605
606 Enable the "compact" display mode for the TUI source window. The
607 compact display uses only as much space as is needed for the line
608 numbers in the current file, and only a single space to separate the
609 line numbers from the source.
610
611 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
612 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
613 no REGEXP is given.
614
615 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
616 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
617 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
618 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
619 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
620 matches against the function name.
621
622 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
623 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
624 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
625 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
626 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
627 against the variable name.
628
629 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
630 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
631 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
632 "set debug remote".
633 The default is 512 bytes.
634
635 info connections
636 Lists the target connections currently in use.
637
638 * Changed commands
639
640 help
641 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
642 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
643 command names.
644
645 apropos [-v] REGEXP
646 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
647 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
648 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
649 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
650 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
651
652 printf
653 eval
654 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
655 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
656 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
657 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
658
659 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
660 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
661 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
662 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
663 parts of the files.
664
665 show style
666 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
667 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
668 the user visualize the different styles.
669
670 set print frame-arguments
671 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
672 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
673
674 set print raw-frame-arguments
675 show print raw-frame-arguments
676
677 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
678 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
679 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
680 release.
681
682 add-inferior [-no-connection]
683 The add-inferior command now supports a "-no-connection" flag that
684 makes the new inferior start with no target connection associated.
685 By default, the new inferior inherits the target connection of the
686 current inferior. See also "info connections".
687
688 info inferior
689 This command's output now includes a new "Connection" column
690 indicating which target connection an inferior is bound to. See
691 "info connections" above.
692
693 maint test-options require-delimiter
694 maint test-options unknown-is-error
695 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
696 maint show test-options-completion-result
697 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
698 framework.
699
700 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
701 These commands are now case-sensitive.
702
703 * New command options, command completion
704
705 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
706 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
707 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
708 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
709 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
710 number of commands got support for new command options in this
711 release:
712
713 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
714 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
715 set by "set print" subcommands:
716
717 -address [on|off]
718 -array [on|off]
719 -array-indexes [on|off]
720 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
721 -null-stop [on|off]
722 -object [on|off]
723 -pretty [on|off]
724 -raw-values [on|off]
725 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
726 -static-members [on|off]
727 -symbol [on|off]
728 -union [on|off]
729 -vtbl [on|off]
730
731 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
732 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
733 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
734 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
735
736 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
737 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
738 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
739
740 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
741 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
742 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
743 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
744 |location-and-address|short-location
745 -past-main [on|off]
746 -past-entry [on|off]
747
748 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
749 exposed as command options too:
750
751 -full
752 -no-filters
753 -hide
754
755 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
756 support the following options:
757
758 -past-main [on|off]
759 -past-entry [on|off]
760
761 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
762 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
763
764 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
765 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
766 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
767 like for example:
768
769 (gdb) p -ra -p -o 0 -- *myptr
770
771 The above is equivalent to:
772
773 (gdb) print -raw-values -pretty -object off -- *myptr
774
775 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
776 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
777 variables" and "info functions".
778
779 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
780 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
781 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
782 from the results.
783
784 * Completion improvements
785
786 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
787 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
788 abbreviated.
789
790 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
791 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
792 commands.
793
794 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
795 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
796 completes on filenames.
797
798 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
799 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
800
801 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
802
803 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
804 elements unlimited".
805
806 * New MI commands
807
808 -complete
809 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
810 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
811 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
812
813 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
814 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
815 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
816
817 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
818 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
819 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
820
821 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
822 modules' command.
823
824 -symbol-info-module-functions and -symbol-info-module-variables.
825 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
826 module functions' and 'info module variables'.
827
828 * Other MI changes
829
830 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
831
832 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
833 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
834 the following commands and events:
835
836 - -break-insert
837 - -break-info
838 - =breakpoint-created
839 - =breakpoint-modified
840
841 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
842 this behavior with previous MI versions.
843
844 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
845 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
846 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
847 present.
848
849 * Testsuite
850
851 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
852 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
853 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
854 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
855
856 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
857
858 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
859 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
860
861 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
862
863 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
864 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
865
866 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
867 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
868 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
869
870 * Removed targets and native configurations
871
872 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
873 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
874 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
875
876 * New Simulators
877
878 TI PRU pru-*-elf
879
880 * Removed targets and native configurations
881
882 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
883 sparc*-*-solaris2.10
884
885 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
886
887 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
888 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
889 HTM registers.
890
891 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
892 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
893 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
894 and operators.
895
896 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
897 (the C++ plug-in).
898
899 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
900 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
901 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
902
903 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
904 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
905
906 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
907 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
908 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
909 in the GDB user manual.
910
911 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
912 executed failed.
913
914 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
915
916 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
917 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
918 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
919 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
920 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
921 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
922 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
923 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
924 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
925 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
926 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
927 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
928
929 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
930 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
931 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
932 information.
933
934 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
935 lucid.
936
937 * New commands
938
939 set debug compile-cplus-types
940 show debug compile-cplus-types
941 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
942 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiling
943 for other languages.
944
945 set debug skip
946 show debug skip
947 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
948 displayed.
949
950 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
951 Apply a command to some frames.
952 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
953 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
954
955 taas COMMAND
956 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
957 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
958
959 faas COMMAND
960 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
961 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
962
963 tfaas COMMAND
964 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
965 output).
966 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
967
968 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
969 maint show dwarf unwinders
970 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
971
972 info proc files
973 Display a list of open files for a process.
974
975 * Changed commands
976
977 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
978 These commands all now take a frame specification which
979 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
980 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
981 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
982 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
983 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
984
985 target remote FILENAME
986 target extended-remote FILENAME
987 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
988 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
989
990 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
991 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
992 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
993 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
994 These commands can now print only the searched entities
995 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
996 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
997 printing headers or informations messages.
998
999 info functions
1000 info types
1001 info variables
1002 rbreak
1003 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
1004 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
1005 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
1006 the shown entities.
1007
1008 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
1009 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
1010 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
1011 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
1012
1013 set tui tab-width NCHARS
1014 show tui tab-width NCHARS
1015 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
1016
1017 set style enabled [on|off]
1018 show style enabled
1019 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
1020 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
1021
1022 set style sources [on|off]
1023 show style sources
1024 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
1025 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
1026 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
1027
1028 set style filename foreground COLOR
1029 set style filename background COLOR
1030 set style filename intensity VALUE
1031 Control the styling of file names.
1032
1033 set style function foreground COLOR
1034 set style function background COLOR
1035 set style function intensity VALUE
1036 Control the styling of function names.
1037
1038 set style variable foreground COLOR
1039 set style variable background COLOR
1040 set style variable intensity VALUE
1041 Control the styling of variable names.
1042
1043 set style address foreground COLOR
1044 set style address background COLOR
1045 set style address intensity VALUE
1046 Control the styling of addresses.
1047
1048 * MI changes
1049
1050 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
1051 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
1052 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
1053 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
1054 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
1055
1056 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
1057 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
1058
1059 * New native configurations
1060
1061 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1062 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1063
1064 * New targets
1065
1066 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1067 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
1068 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
1069 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1070 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
1071 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
1072
1073 * Removed targets
1074
1075 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
1076 before Windows XP.
1077
1078 * Python API
1079
1080 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
1081
1082 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
1083 space associated to that inferior.
1084
1085 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
1086 of objfiles associated to that program space.
1087
1088 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
1089 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
1090 the gdb core.
1091
1092 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
1093 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
1094 correct and did not work properly.
1095
1096 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
1097 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
1098
1099 * Configure changes
1100
1101 --enable-ubsan
1102
1103 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
1104 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
1105 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
1106 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
1107 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
1108
1109 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
1110
1111 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
1112 for the MIPS target.
1113
1114 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
1115 offset to all sections.
1116
1117 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
1118 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
1119 address of individual sections using '-s'.
1120
1121 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
1122 (address of the text section).
1123
1124 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
1125 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
1126 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
1127 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
1128 default.
1129
1130 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
1131 for the rest of the current command.
1132
1133 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
1134 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
1135
1136 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
1137 files created on FreeBSD systems.
1138
1139 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
1140 alignof.
1141
1142 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
1143 the vector length while the process is running.
1144
1145 * New commands
1146
1147 set debug fbsd-nat
1148 show debug fbsd-nat
1149 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
1150
1151 set|show varsize-limit
1152 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
1153 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
1154 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
1155
1156 set|show record btrace cpu
1157 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
1158 branch trace decode.
1159
1160 maint check libthread-db
1161 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
1162 library
1163
1164 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
1165 maint show check-libthread-db
1166 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
1167 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
1168 perform such checks.
1169
1170 * Python API
1171
1172 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
1173
1174 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
1175 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
1176
1177 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
1178
1179 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
1180 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
1181 of convenience variables.
1182
1183 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
1184 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
1185 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
1186
1187 * New targets
1188
1189 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
1190
1191 * Removed targets and native configurations
1192
1193 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
1194 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
1195 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
1196 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
1197
1198 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
1199
1200 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
1201 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
1202 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
1203 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
1204 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
1205 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
1206 reported.
1207
1208 * Configure changes
1209
1210 --enable-codesign=CERT
1211 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
1212 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
1213 gdb to work properly.
1214
1215 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
1216 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
1217
1218 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
1219
1220 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
1221 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
1222 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
1223
1224 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
1225 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
1226
1227 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
1228 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
1229 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
1230 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
1231 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
1232
1233 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
1234 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
1235 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
1236 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
1237
1238 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
1239 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
1240
1241 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
1242 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
1243 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
1244
1245 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
1246 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
1247 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
1248
1249 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
1250 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
1251 environment" command.
1252
1253 * Completion improvements
1254
1255 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
1256 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
1257 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
1258 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
1259 correctly:
1260
1261 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
1262 (gdb) b function(int)
1263
1264 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
1265 C++ anonymous namespaces:
1266
1267 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
1268 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
1269 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
1270 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
1271
1272 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
1273 completion support, that better understands what you're
1274 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
1275 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
1276 setting a breakpoint.
1277
1278 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
1279
1280 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
1281
1282 * New command line options (gcore)
1283
1284 -a
1285 Dump all memory mappings.
1286
1287 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
1288
1289 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
1290 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
1291 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
1292
1293 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
1294
1295 A::B::func()
1296 B::func()
1297
1298 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
1299 on both symbols.
1300
1301 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
1302 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
1303 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
1304 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
1305 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
1306 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
1307 a breakpoint from Python.
1308
1309 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1310
1311 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1312 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
1313 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
1314
1315 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
1316
1317 function[abi:cxx11](int)
1318 ^^^^^^^^^^^
1319
1320 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
1321 no tag, like:
1322
1323 (gdb) b function(int)
1324
1325 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
1326
1327 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
1328
1329 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
1330
1331 * Python Scripting
1332
1333 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
1334 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
1335 description of these.
1336
1337 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
1338 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
1339 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
1340
1341 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
1342 manual for a further description of this feature.
1343
1344
1345 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1346
1347 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
1348 specified initial working directory.
1349
1350 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
1351 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
1352
1353 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
1354 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
1355
1356 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
1357 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
1358
1359 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
1360 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
1361 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
1362 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
1363 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
1364
1365 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
1366 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
1367 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
1368
1369 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
1370 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
1371 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
1372 in the *stopped notification.
1373
1374 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
1375 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
1376
1377 * New remote packets
1378
1379 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
1380 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
1381 the inferior when starting it.
1382
1383 QEnvironmentUnset
1384 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
1385 before starting the remote inferior.
1386
1387 QEnvironmentReset
1388 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
1389 user-set environment variables should be unset).
1390
1391 QStartupWithShell
1392 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
1393
1394 QSetWorkingDir
1395 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
1396 working directory.
1397
1398 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
1399 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
1400
1401 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
1402 filter the tests to be run.
1403
1404 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
1405 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
1406
1407 * New commands
1408
1409 set|show cwd
1410 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
1411
1412 set|show compile-gcc
1413 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
1414 with the 'compile' commands.
1415
1416 set debug separate-debug-file
1417 show debug separate-debug-file
1418 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
1419
1420 set dump-excluded-mappings
1421 show dump-excluded-mappings
1422 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
1423 dumped when generating a core file.
1424
1425 maint info selftests
1426 List the registered selftests.
1427
1428 starti
1429 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
1430
1431 set|show debug or1k
1432 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
1433
1434 set|show print type nested-type-limit
1435 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
1436 type printer will show.
1437
1438 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
1439 `o' for nexti.
1440
1441 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
1442
1443 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
1444 'int'.
1445
1446 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
1447 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
1448 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
1449 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
1450
1451 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
1452 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
1453 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
1454 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1455 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
1456 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1457
1458 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
1459 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
1460 unless you tell it the variable's type:
1461
1462 (gdb) p var
1463 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
1464 (gdb) p (float) var
1465 $3 = 3.14
1466
1467 * New native configurations
1468
1469 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1470 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1471
1472 * New targets
1473
1474 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1475 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1476 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
1477
1478 * Removed targets and native configurations
1479
1480 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
1481
1482 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
1483
1484 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
1485 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
1486 available in future Intel CPUs.
1487
1488 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
1489
1490 * Python Scripting
1491
1492 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
1493 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
1494
1495 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
1496 instructions.
1497
1498 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
1499
1500 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
1501
1502 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
1503 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
1504 removed.
1505
1506 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
1507
1508 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
1509 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
1510
1511 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
1512
1513 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
1514 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
1515 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
1516 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
1517 features.
1518
1519 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
1520
1521 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
1522 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
1523 debugger.
1524
1525 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
1526
1527 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1528 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1529
1530 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1531
1532 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1533
1534 define mycommand
1535 set $i = 0
1536 while $i < $argc
1537 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1538 set $i = $i + 1
1539 end
1540 end
1541
1542 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1543
1544 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1545 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1546
1547 * New native configurations
1548
1549 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1550
1551 * New targets
1552
1553 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1554 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1555
1556 * Removed targets and native configurations
1557
1558 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1559 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1560
1561 * New commands
1562
1563 flash-erase
1564 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1565
1566 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1567 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1568
1569 * New options
1570
1571 set disassembler-options
1572 show disassembler-options
1573 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1574 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1575 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1576 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1577 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1578
1579 * New MI commands
1580
1581 -target-flash-erase
1582 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1583 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1584
1585 -file-list-shared-libraries
1586 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1587 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1588
1589 -catch-handlers
1590 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1591 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1592
1593 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1594
1595 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1596
1597 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1598 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1599 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1600 option will be removed in a future release.
1601
1602 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1603 GDB connection.
1604
1605 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1606 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1607
1608 (gdb) bt
1609 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1610 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1611 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1612 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1613 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1614 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1615 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1616 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1617 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1618
1619 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1620 arrays of dynamic types.
1621
1622 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1623 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1624 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1625 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1626 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1627 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1628
1629 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1630 descriptions.
1631
1632 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1633 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1634 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1635
1636 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1637
1638 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1639 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1640 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1641 signal received and code location.
1642
1643 For example:
1644
1645 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1646 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1647 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1648 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1649
1650 * Rust language support.
1651 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1652 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1653 Rust.
1654
1655 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1656
1657 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1658 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1659 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1660 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1661 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1662 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1663 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1664 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1665 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1666 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1667 line.
1668
1669 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1670
1671 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1672 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1673
1674 * New commands
1675
1676 skip -file file
1677 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1678 skip -function function
1679 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1680 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1681 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1682 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1683
1684 maint info line-table REGEXP
1685 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data structure.
1686
1687 maint selftest
1688 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1689
1690 new-ui INTERP TTY
1691 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1692 using the TTY file for input/output.
1693
1694 * Python Scripting
1695
1696 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1697 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1698 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1699 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1700 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1701
1702 signal-event EVENTID
1703 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1704 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1705 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1706 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1707 signalling an event.
1708
1709 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1710 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1711 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1712
1713 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1714 been removed:
1715
1716 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1717 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1718 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1719 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1720 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1721 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1722
1723 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1724 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1725 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1726 bytecode into native code.
1727
1728 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1729 recording. For example:
1730
1731 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1732
1733 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1734
1735 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1736
1737 * New targets
1738
1739 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1740
1741 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1742
1743 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1744
1745 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1746
1747 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1748 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1749 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1750
1751 (gdb) info threads
1752 Id Target Id Frame
1753 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1754 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1755 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1756 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1757
1758 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1759 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1760 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1761
1762 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1763 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1764 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1765
1766 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1767 IDs.
1768
1769 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1770 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1771
1772 (gdb) thread 2.1
1773 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1774 (gdb)
1775
1776 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1777 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1778 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1779 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1780 threads 2.*".
1781
1782 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1783 all threads.
1784
1785 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1786 the current thread.
1787
1788 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1789 current inferior.
1790
1791 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1792 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1793 example:
1794
1795 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1796 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1797
1798 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1799
1800 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1801
1802 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1803 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1804
1805 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1806 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1807 clients.
1808
1809 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1810 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1811 at the same time.
1812
1813 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1814 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1815 into native code.
1816
1817 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1818
1819 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1820 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1821 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1822
1823 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1824 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1825
1826 * New commands
1827
1828 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1829 maint show target-non-stop
1830 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1831 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1832 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1833
1834 maint set bfd-sharing
1835 maint show bfd-sharing
1836 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1837
1838 set debug bfd-cache
1839 show debug bfd-cache
1840 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1841
1842 set debug fbsd-lwp
1843 show debug fbsd-lwp
1844 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1845
1846 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1847 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1848 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1849
1850 set remote thread-events
1851 show remote thread-events
1852 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1853
1854 set ada print-signatures on|off
1855 show ada print-signatures"
1856 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1857 selection menus. It is activated (@code{on}) by default.
1858
1859 set max-value-size
1860 show max-value-size
1861 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1862 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1863 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1864
1865 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1866 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1867 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1868 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1869 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1870 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1871
1872 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1873 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1874
1875 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1876 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1877
1878 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1879
1880 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1881 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1882 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1883 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1884 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1885 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1886
1887 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1888 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1889
1890 catch handlers
1891 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1892
1893 * New remote packets
1894
1895 exec stop reason
1896 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1897
1898 exec-events feature in qSupported
1899 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1900 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1901 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1902 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1903
1904 vCtrlC
1905 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1906 non-stop mode.
1907
1908 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1909 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1910
1911 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1912 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1913
1914 QThreadEvents
1915 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1916 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1917 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1918 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1919 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1920 stop for that same thread.
1921
1922 N stop reply
1923 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1924 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1925 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1926
1927 QCatchSyscalls
1928 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1929 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1930
1931 syscall_entry stop reason
1932 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1933
1934 syscall_return stop reason
1935 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1936
1937 * Extended-remote exec events
1938
1939 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1940 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1941 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1942
1943 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1944 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1945 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1946
1947 * Thread names in remote protocol
1948
1949 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1950 thread.
1951
1952 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1953
1954 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1955 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1956 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1957 fork and exec catchpoints.
1958
1959 * Remote syscall events
1960
1961 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1962 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1963
1964 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1965 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1966 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1967
1968 * MI changes
1969
1970 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1971 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1972 left.
1973
1974 * Python Scripting
1975
1976 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1977 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1978 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1979 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1980 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1981 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1982
1983 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1984
1985 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1986 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1987 including advance SIMD instructions.
1988
1989 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1990
1991 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1992 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1993 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1994 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1995 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1996 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1997 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1998
1999 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2000 cpu information :
2001 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
2002
2003 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
2004 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
2005 remote serial I/O.
2006
2007 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
2008 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
2009 and may include things like its command line arguments.
2010
2011 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
2012 is now available on all platforms.
2013
2014 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
2015 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
2016 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
2017 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
2018 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
2019 backward compatibility.
2020
2021 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
2022 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
2023 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
2024 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
2025
2026 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
2027 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
2028 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
2029 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
2030 packets" below.
2031
2032 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
2033
2034 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
2035
2036 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
2037 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
2038 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
2039 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
2040 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
2041 See "New remote packets" below.
2042
2043 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
2044 available register groups, including target specific groups.
2045
2046 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
2047 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
2048 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
2049 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
2050 are ignored.
2051
2052 * Guile Scripting
2053
2054 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
2055
2056 * Python Scripting
2057
2058 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
2059 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
2060 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
2061 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
2062 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
2063 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
2064 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
2065 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
2066 "const" version of the value respectively.
2067
2068 * New commands
2069
2070 maint print symbol-cache
2071 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
2072
2073 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
2074 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
2075
2076 maint flush-symbol-cache
2077 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
2078
2079 record btrace bts
2080 record bts
2081 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
2082
2083 compile print
2084 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
2085
2086 tui enable
2087 tui disable
2088 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
2089
2090 show mpx bound
2091 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
2092 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
2093
2094 record btrace pt
2095 record pt
2096 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
2097
2098 maint info btrace
2099 Print information about branch tracing internals.
2100
2101 maint btrace packet-history
2102 Print the raw branch tracing data.
2103
2104 maint btrace clear-packet-history
2105 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
2106
2107 maint btrace clear
2108 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
2109 anew by the next "record" command.
2110
2111 * New options
2112
2113 set debug dwarf-die
2114 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
2115 show debug dwarf-die
2116 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
2117
2118 set debug dwarf-read
2119 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
2120 show debug dwarf-read
2121 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
2122
2123 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
2124 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2125 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
2126 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2127
2128 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
2129 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2130 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
2131 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2132
2133 set debug dwarf-line
2134 show debug dwarf-line
2135 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
2136
2137 set max-completions
2138 show max-completions
2139 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
2140 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
2141 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
2142 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
2143
2144 set history remove-duplicates
2145 show history remove-duplicates
2146 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
2147
2148 maint set symbol-cache-size
2149 maint show symbol-cache-size
2150 Control the size of the symbol cache.
2151
2152 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
2153 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2154 BTS format.
2155 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2156 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2157
2158 set debug linux-namespaces
2159 show debug linux-namespaces
2160 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
2161
2162 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
2163 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2164 Intel Processor Trace format.
2165 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2166 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2167
2168 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
2169 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
2170 packet history.
2171
2172 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
2173 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
2174
2175 * Python/Guile scripting
2176
2177 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
2178 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
2179
2180 * New remote packets
2181
2182 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
2183 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
2184
2185 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
2186 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
2187
2188 Qbtrace:pt
2189 Enable Intel Processor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
2190 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
2191 qSupported query.
2192
2193 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
2194 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
2195 Trace format.
2196
2197 swbreak stop reason
2198 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
2199 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
2200 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
2201 mode operation.
2202
2203 hwbreak stop reason
2204 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
2205 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
2206
2207 vFile:fstat:
2208 Return information about files on the remote system.
2209
2210 qXfer:exec-file:read
2211 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
2212 create a process running on the remote system.
2213
2214 vFile:setfs:
2215 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
2216 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
2217 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
2218 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
2219
2220 fork stop reason
2221 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
2222
2223 vfork stop reason
2224 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
2225
2226 vforkdone stop reason
2227 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
2228 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
2229
2230 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
2231 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
2232 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
2233 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
2234 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
2235 whether these features are enabled.
2236
2237 * Extended-remote fork events
2238
2239 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
2240 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
2241 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
2242 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
2243
2244 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
2245 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
2246 the btrace record target.
2247 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
2248
2249 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
2250 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
2251
2252 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
2253 targets.
2254
2255 * Removed command line options
2256
2257 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
2258
2259 * Removed targets and native configurations
2260
2261 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
2262 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2263
2264 * New configure options
2265
2266 --with-intel-pt
2267 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
2268 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
2269
2270 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
2271 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
2272 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
2273 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
2274
2275 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
2276
2277 * Python Scripting
2278
2279 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
2280
2281 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
2282
2283 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
2284
2285 * Python Scripting
2286
2287 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
2288 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
2289 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
2290 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
2291 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
2292 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
2293 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
2294 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
2295 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
2296 selecting a new file to debug.
2297 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
2298 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
2299
2300 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
2301 inferior.
2302
2303 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
2304 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
2305 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
2306 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
2307
2308 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2309
2310 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2311 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2312 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2313 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2314
2315 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
2316 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
2317 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
2318 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
2319 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
2320 interface with this new feature are:
2321
2322 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
2323 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
2324
2325 * New commands
2326
2327 demangle [-l language] [--] name
2328 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
2329 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
2330 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
2331 as "maint demangler-warning".
2332
2333 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
2334 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
2335
2336 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
2337 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
2338 scripts.
2339
2340 maint print user-registers
2341 List all currently available "user" registers.
2342
2343 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
2344 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
2345 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
2346
2347 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
2348 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
2349 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
2350 provided.
2351
2352 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
2353 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
2354 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
2355 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
2356 at resume time.
2357
2358 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
2359 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
2360 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
2361 switched threads meanwhile.
2362
2363 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
2364
2365 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
2366 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
2367 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
2368 is now the default mode.
2369
2370 * New options
2371
2372 set debug symbol-lookup
2373 show debug symbol-lookup
2374 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
2375
2376 * MI changes
2377
2378 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
2379 inferiors that have exited.
2380
2381 * New targets
2382
2383 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
2384
2385 * Removed targets
2386
2387 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2388
2389 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
2390 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
2391 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
2392 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
2393 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
2394
2395 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2396 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2397 its alias "share", instead.
2398
2399 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
2400
2401 * New command line options
2402
2403 -D data-directory
2404 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
2405
2406 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
2407 as specified in ISO C99.
2408
2409 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
2410 with or without disassembly.
2411
2412 * Guile scripting
2413
2414 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
2415 available is determined at configure time.
2416 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
2417 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
2418
2419 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2420
2421 guile [code]
2422 gu [code]
2423 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
2424
2425 guile-repl
2426 gr
2427 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
2428
2429 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
2430 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
2431
2432 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
2433 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
2434
2435 * New options
2436
2437 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
2438 show print symbol-loading
2439 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
2440 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
2441 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
2442 becomes less useful.
2443
2444 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
2445 show guile print-stack
2446 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
2447
2448 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
2449 show auto-load guile-scripts
2450 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
2451
2452 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
2453 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
2454 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
2455 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
2456 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
2457 usage of this option.
2458
2459 set auto-connect-native-target
2460
2461 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
2462 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
2463 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
2464
2465 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
2466 show record btrace replay-memory-access
2467 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
2468
2469 maint set target-async (on|off)
2470 maint show target-async
2471 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
2472 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
2473 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
2474 occurring only in synchronous mode.
2475
2476 set mi-async (on|off)
2477 show mi-async
2478 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
2479 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
2480
2481 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
2482 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
2483
2484 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
2485 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
2486 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
2487 "set target-async on" command.
2488
2489 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2490
2491 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
2492 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
2493 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
2494 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
2495 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
2496
2497 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
2498 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
2499 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
2500
2501 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
2502 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
2503 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
2504 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
2505 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
2506 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
2507 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
2508
2509 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
2510 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
2511
2512 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
2513 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
2514 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
2515
2516 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
2517 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
2518 memory or registers.
2519
2520 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
2521
2522 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
2523 remote. It now works with all targets.
2524
2525 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
2526 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
2527 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2528 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2529 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2530 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2531 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2532 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2533 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2534 target-stack".
2535
2536 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2537 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2538 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2539
2540 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2541
2542 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2543 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2544 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2545
2546 * New remote packets
2547
2548 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2549 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2550 branch trace incrementally.
2551
2552 * Python Scripting
2553
2554 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2555 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2556 available.
2557 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2558 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2559 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2560 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2561 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2562
2563 * New targets
2564 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2565
2566 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2567 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2568 its alias "share", instead.
2569
2570 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2571 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2572 instead.
2573
2574 * MI changes
2575
2576 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2577 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2578 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2579 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2580 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2581 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2582 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2583 commands and CLI execution commands.
2584
2585 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2586
2587 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2588 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2589 recording has been added.
2590
2591 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2592
2593 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2594 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2595
2596 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2597 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2598 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2599 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2600 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2601 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2602 "void".
2603
2604 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2605
2606 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2607
2608 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2609 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2610 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2611 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2612
2613 (gdb) p $rax
2614 $1 = <not saved>
2615
2616 (gdb) info registers rax
2617 rax <not saved>
2618
2619 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2620 "*value not available*".
2621
2622 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2623 to binaries.
2624
2625 * Python scripting
2626
2627 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2628 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2629 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2630 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2631 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2632 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2633
2634 * New targets
2635
2636 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2637 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2638 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2639
2640 * Removed native configurations
2641
2642 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2643 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2644
2645 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2646 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2647 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2648 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2649 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2650 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2651 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2652
2653 * New commands:
2654 catch rethrow
2655 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2656 maint check-psymtabs
2657 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2658 maint check-symtabs
2659 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2660 maint expand-symtabs
2661 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2662
2663 show configuration
2664 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2665
2666 maint set|show per-command
2667 maint set|show per-command space
2668 maint set|show per-command time
2669 maint set|show per-command symtab
2670 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2671
2672 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2673 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2674 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2675 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2676 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2677
2678 info exceptions
2679 info exceptions REGEXP
2680 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2681 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2682 are listed.
2683
2684 * New options
2685
2686 set debug symfile off|on
2687 show debug symfile
2688 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2689 symbol tables within those files
2690
2691 set print raw frame-arguments
2692 show print raw frame-arguments
2693 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2694 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2695
2696 set remote trace-status-packet
2697 show remote trace-status-packet
2698 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2699
2700 set debug nios2
2701 show debug nios2
2702 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2703
2704 set range-stepping
2705 show range-stepping
2706 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2707
2708 set startup-with-shell
2709 show startup-with-shell
2710 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2711 directly.
2712
2713 set code-cache
2714 show code-cache
2715 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2716 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2717
2718 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2719 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2720 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2721 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2722 "set height 0".
2723
2724 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2725 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2726 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2727
2728 * New command-line options
2729 --configuration
2730 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2731
2732 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2733 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2734
2735 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2736 GDB command gcore.
2737
2738 * GDB now implements the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2739
2740 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2741 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2742
2743 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2744 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2745
2746 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2747 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2748 due to an uncaught signal.
2749
2750 * MI changes
2751
2752 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2753 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2754 command, which should contain "language-option".
2755
2756 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2757 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2758
2759 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2760 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2761 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2762 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2763 "undefined-command-error-code".
2764
2765 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2766 Trace Format now.
2767
2768 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2769
2770 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2771 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2772 are displayed.
2773
2774 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2775 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2776
2777 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2778 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2779 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2780
2781 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2782 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2783 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2784 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2785 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2786 "exec-run-start-option".
2787
2788 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2789 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2790
2791 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2792 the new "info exceptions" command.
2793
2794 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2795 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2796 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2797 ** ElinOS
2798 ** Wind River Linux
2799
2800 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2801 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2802 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2803 below.
2804
2805 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2806 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2807
2808 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2809 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2810 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2811
2812 * New remote packets
2813
2814 vCont;r
2815
2816 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2817 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2818 involvemement at each single-step.
2819
2820 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2821 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2822 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2823 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2824 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2825 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2826 speedup.
2827
2828 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2829
2830 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2831 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2832
2833 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2834 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2835 trace state variables.
2836
2837 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2838 target.
2839
2840 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2841 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2842
2843 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2844
2845 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2846 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2847 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2848 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2849
2850 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2851
2852 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2853 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2854 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2855 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2856
2857 set|show record full insn-number-max
2858 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2859 set|show record full memory-query
2860
2861 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2862 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2863 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2864 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2865 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2866
2867 record btrace
2868
2869 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2870 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2871
2872 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2873 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2874 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2875
2876 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2877 instruction granularity
2878
2879 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2880 function granularity
2881
2882 * New native configurations
2883
2884 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2885 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2886 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2887 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2888
2889 * New targets
2890
2891 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2892 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2893 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2894 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2895 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2896
2897 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2898 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2899 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2900 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2901 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2902 --data-directory command-line option.
2903
2904 * New command line options:
2905
2906 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2907 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2908
2909 * Removed command line options
2910
2911 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2912 Emacs.
2913
2914 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2915 type formatting.
2916
2917 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2918
2919 * Python scripting
2920
2921 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2922
2923 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2924
2925 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2926
2927 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2928
2929 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2930 of architecture in the Python API.
2931
2932 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2933 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2934
2935 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2936
2937 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2938 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2939 ** $_strlen(str)
2940 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2941
2942 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2943 given an argument.
2944
2945 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2946 default for GCC since November 2000.
2947
2948 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2949
2950 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2951 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2952
2953 * New configure options
2954
2955 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2956 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2957 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2958 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2959 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2960 options allow the user to override that default.
2961 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2962 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2963 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2964
2965 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2966
2967 catch signal
2968 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2969 conditions to be attached.
2970
2971 maint info bfds
2972 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2973
2974 python-interactive [command]
2975 pi [command]
2976 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2977 and print the result of expressions.
2978
2979 py [command]
2980 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2981
2982 enable type-printer [name]...
2983 disable type-printer [name]...
2984 Enable or disable type printers.
2985
2986 * Removed commands
2987
2988 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2989 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2990 instead.
2991
2992 * New options
2993
2994 set print type methods (on|off)
2995 show print type methods
2996 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2997 The default is to show them.
2998
2999 set print type typedefs (on|off)
3000 show print type typedefs
3001 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
3002 The default is to show them.
3003
3004 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
3005 show filename-display
3006 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
3007 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
3008
3009 set trace-buffer-size
3010 show trace-buffer-size
3011 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
3012
3013 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
3014 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
3015 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
3016
3017 set debug aarch64
3018 show debug aarch64
3019 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
3020 The default is off.
3021
3022 set debug coff-pe-read
3023 show debug coff-pe-read
3024 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
3025 exported symbols.
3026
3027 set debug mach-o
3028 show debug mach-o
3029 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
3030 processing.
3031
3032 set debug notification
3033 show debug notification
3034 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
3035
3036 * MI changes
3037
3038 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
3039 "=cmd-param-changed".
3040 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
3041 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
3042 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
3043 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
3044 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
3045 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
3046 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
3047 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
3048 "=memory-changed".
3049 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
3050 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
3051 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
3052 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3053 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
3054 library load/unload events.
3055 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
3056 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
3057 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
3058 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
3059 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
3060 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
3061 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
3062 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
3063
3064 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
3065 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
3066 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
3067 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
3068
3069 * New remote packets
3070
3071 QTBuffer:size
3072 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
3073 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3074
3075 Qbtrace:bts
3076 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
3077 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
3078 qSupported query.
3079
3080 Qbtrace:off
3081 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
3082 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3083
3084 qXfer:btrace:read
3085 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
3086 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3087
3088 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
3089
3090 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
3091 for more x32 ABI info.
3092
3093 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
3094
3095 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
3096
3097 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
3098 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
3099 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
3100 "info os files" lists file descriptors
3101 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
3102 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
3103 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
3104 "info os msg" lists message queues
3105 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
3106
3107 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
3108 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
3109 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
3110 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
3111 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
3112 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
3113
3114 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
3115 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
3116 record/replay support.
3117
3118 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
3119
3120 * Python scripting
3121
3122 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
3123 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
3124
3125 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
3126
3127 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
3128 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
3129
3130 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
3131
3132 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
3133 the source at which the symbol was defined.
3134
3135 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
3136 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
3137 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
3138 symbol's value.
3139
3140 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
3141 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
3142
3143 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
3144 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
3145 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
3146
3147 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
3148 object associated with a PC value.
3149
3150 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
3151 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
3152
3153 * Go language support.
3154 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
3155 language.
3156
3157 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
3158 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
3159
3160 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
3161 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
3162
3163 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
3164 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
3165 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
3166 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
3167 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
3168 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
3169
3170 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
3171 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
3172 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
3173 build/libcpp/expr.c.
3174
3175 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
3176 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
3177
3178 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
3179 since December 2007.
3180
3181 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
3182 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
3183 command does. For instance:
3184
3185 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
3186
3187 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
3188 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
3189 created, using the "condition" command.
3190
3191 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
3192 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
3193
3194 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
3195
3196 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
3197 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
3198 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
3199 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
3200 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
3201 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
3202 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
3203 files with older .gdb_index sections.
3204
3205 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
3206 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
3207 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
3208 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
3209 the .gdb_index section.
3210
3211 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
3212
3213 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
3214 target.
3215
3216 * MI changes
3217
3218 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
3219
3220 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
3221
3222 * New commands
3223
3224 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3225 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3226 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
3227
3228 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
3229 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
3230
3231 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
3232 several hits.
3233
3234 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
3235 C++ and Java objects.
3236
3237 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
3238 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
3239 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
3240 configured with '--with-python'.
3241
3242 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
3243 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
3244 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
3245 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
3246 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
3247 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
3248 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
3249
3250 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
3251 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
3252 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
3253 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
3254
3255 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
3256 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
3257 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
3258 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
3259
3260 ** "set print symbol"
3261 "show print symbol"
3262 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
3263 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
3264 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
3265
3266 * Deprecated commands
3267
3268 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
3269 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
3270
3271 * New targets
3272
3273 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3274 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
3275
3276 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
3277 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
3278 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
3279 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
3280 evaluates to true.
3281
3282 * New options
3283
3284 set mips compression
3285 show mips compression
3286 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
3287 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
3288 mips16
3289 micromips
3290 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
3291
3292 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
3293 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
3294 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
3295 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
3296 available mode.
3297 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
3298 target.
3299
3300 set auto-load off
3301 Disable auto-loading globally.
3302
3303 show auto-load
3304 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
3305
3306 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
3307 show auto-load gdb-scripts
3308 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
3309
3310 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
3311 show auto-load python-scripts
3312 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
3313
3314 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
3315 show auto-load local-gdbinit
3316 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
3317
3318 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
3319 show auto-load libthread-db
3320 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
3321
3322 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3323 show auto-load scripts-directory
3324 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
3325 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
3326 of the directories listed by this option.
3327 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3328
3329 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3330 show auto-load safe-path
3331 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
3332 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3333
3334 set debug auto-load on|off
3335 show debug auto-load
3336 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
3337
3338 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
3339 show dprintf-style
3340 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
3341 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
3342 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
3343 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
3344
3345 set dprintf-function <expr>
3346 show dprintf-function
3347 set dprintf-channel <expr>
3348 show dprintf-channel
3349 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
3350 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
3351
3352 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
3353 show disconnected-dprintf
3354 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
3355 after GDB disconnects.
3356
3357 * New configure options
3358
3359 --with-auto-load-dir
3360 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
3361 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
3362 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
3363 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
3364 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
3365
3366 --with-auto-load-safe-path
3367 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
3368 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
3369
3370 --without-auto-load-safe-path
3371 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
3372 security feature.
3373
3374 * New remote packets
3375
3376 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
3377
3378 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
3379 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
3380 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
3381 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
3382
3383 QProgramSignals:
3384
3385 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
3386 program without GDB involvement.
3387
3388 * New command line options
3389
3390 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
3391 before loading inferior.
3392 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
3393 execute it before loading inferior.
3394
3395 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
3396
3397 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
3398 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
3399 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
3400 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
3401 inferior changes.
3402
3403 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
3404 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
3405
3406 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
3407 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
3408 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
3409 target hardware watchpoint.
3410
3411 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
3412 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
3413 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
3414 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
3415
3416 * Python scripting
3417
3418 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
3419 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
3420 existing one.
3421
3422 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
3423 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
3424 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
3425 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
3426 now "message", which just prints the error message without
3427 the stack trace.
3428
3429 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3430 Python API.
3431
3432 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
3433 modules library. This module provides functionality for
3434 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
3435 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
3436 corresponding value.
3437
3438 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
3439 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
3440 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
3441 on GDB start-up.
3442
3443 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
3444 static_block will return the global and static blocks
3445 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
3446 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
3447
3448 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
3449
3450 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
3451 "gdb.breakpoints".
3452
3453 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
3454 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
3455 available in the CLI.
3456
3457 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
3458 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
3459 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
3460 "some_type.items()".
3461
3462 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
3463 new object file.
3464
3465 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
3466 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
3467 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
3468 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
3469 any anonymous fields.
3470
3471 * MI changes
3472
3473 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
3474 "solib-event".
3475
3476 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
3477 "=breakpoint-modified".
3478
3479 ** New command -ada-task-info.
3480
3481 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
3482 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
3483 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
3484 lives.
3485
3486 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
3487 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
3488 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
3489 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
3490 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
3491
3492 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
3493 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
3494
3495 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
3496 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
3497 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
3498 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
3499 use this option to specify where to find it.
3500
3501 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3502 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
3503 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
3504 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
3505 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
3506 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3507 section in the user manual for more details.
3508
3509 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
3510 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
3511 become available after that.
3512
3513 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
3514
3515 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
3516 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
3517 gcc version 4.7.
3518
3519 * New commands
3520
3521 !SHELL COMMAND
3522 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
3523 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
3524
3525 * Changed commands
3526
3527 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3528 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3529 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3530
3531 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3532 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3533 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3534
3535 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3536 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3537 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3538 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3539 name starts with a hyphen.
3540
3541 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3542 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3543 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3544 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3545 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3546 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3547 number of bytes that will be collected.
3548
3549 tstart [NOTES]
3550 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3551 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3552 setting the variable trace-notes.
3553
3554 tstop [NOTES]
3555 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3556 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3557 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3558 trace-stop-notes.
3559
3560 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3561 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3562 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3563 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3564 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3565 is running.
3566
3567 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3568 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3569 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3570
3571 * New options
3572
3573 set debug dwarf2-read
3574 show debug dwarf2-read
3575 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3576 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3577
3578 set debug symtab-create
3579 show debug symtab-create
3580 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3581 creation. The default is off.
3582
3583 set extended-prompt
3584 show extended-prompt
3585 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3586 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3587 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3588 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3589 prompt is displayed.
3590
3591 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3592 show print entry-values
3593 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3594 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3595 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3596
3597 set debug entry-values
3598 show debug entry-values
3599 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3600 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3601
3602 set basenames-may-differ
3603 show basenames-may-differ
3604 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3605 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3606 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3607 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3608 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3609 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3610 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3611 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3612
3613 set trace-user
3614 show trace-user
3615 set trace-notes
3616 show trace-notes
3617 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3618 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3619 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3620 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3621
3622 set trace-stop-notes
3623 show trace-stop-notes
3624 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3625 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3626 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3627 started by someone else.
3628
3629 * New remote packets
3630
3631 QTEnable
3632
3633 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3634
3635 QTDisable
3636
3637 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3638
3639 QTNotes
3640
3641 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3642
3643 qTP
3644
3645 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3646
3647 qTMinFTPILen
3648
3649 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3650 be placed.
3651
3652 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3653 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3654
3655 * New targets
3656
3657 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3658
3659 * New Simulators
3660
3661 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3662
3663 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3664
3665 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3666
3667 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3668
3669 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3670 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3671 matches the given regular expression.
3672
3673 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3674
3675 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3676 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3677
3678 * New command line options
3679
3680 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3681 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3682
3683 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3684 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3685
3686 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3687 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3688 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3689
3690 * GDB now understands thread names.
3691
3692 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3693 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3694
3695 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3696 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3697
3698 * OpenCL C
3699 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3700 has been integrated into GDB.
3701
3702 * Python scripting
3703
3704 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3705 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3706 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3707
3708 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3709 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3710 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3711 and allows for more dynamic content.
3712
3713 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3714 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3715 have an is_valid method.
3716
3717 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3718 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3719 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3720
3721 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3722
3723 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3724 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3725 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3726 that function like so:
3727
3728 result = some_value (10,20)
3729
3730 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3731 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3732 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3733
3734 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3735 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3736 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3737 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3738 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3739
3740 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3741 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3742
3743 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3744
3745 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3746 selected thread.
3747
3748 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3749 holds the thread's name.
3750
3751 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3752 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3753 occurring in the process being debugged.
3754 The following events are currently supported:
3755 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3756 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3757 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3758
3759 * C++ Improvements:
3760
3761 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3762 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3763
3764 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3765
3766 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3767 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3768 was added to GCC 4.5.
3769
3770 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3771 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3772 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3773 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3774 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3775 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3776
3777 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3778 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3779 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3780 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3781 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3782
3783 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3784 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3785 execution to a label.
3786
3787 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3788 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3789 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3790 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3791
3792 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3793 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3794 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3795 of scope.
3796
3797 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3798
3799 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3800 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3801 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3802 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3803 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3804 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3805
3806 (gdb) info threads
3807 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3808
3809 While now you see this:
3810
3811 (gdb) info threads
3812 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3813
3814 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3815 dumps.
3816
3817 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3818 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3819 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3820 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3821
3822 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3823 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3824 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3825 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3826 section in the user manual for more details.
3827
3828 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3829
3830 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3831 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3832
3833 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3834
3835 * New native configurations
3836
3837 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3838
3839 * New targets:
3840
3841 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3842
3843 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3844 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3845 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3846 in the GDB user manual.
3847
3848 * Guile support was removed.
3849
3850 * New features in the GNU simulator
3851
3852 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3853
3854 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3855
3856 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3857
3858 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3859
3860 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3861 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3862 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3863 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3864 was always disabled for such configurations.
3865
3866 * C++ Improvements:
3867
3868 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3869
3870 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3871 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3872 For example:
3873 namespace A
3874 {
3875 class B { };
3876 void foo (B) { }
3877 }
3878 ...
3879 A::B b
3880 foo(b)
3881 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3882 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3883 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3884
3885 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3886
3887 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3888 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3889 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3890 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3891 entry.
3892 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3893 mentioned flavors of operators.
3894
3895 ** static const class members
3896
3897 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3898 class definition has been fixed.
3899
3900 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3901
3902 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3903 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3904 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3905 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3906 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3907 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3908
3909 * Static tracepoints
3910
3911 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3912 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3913 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3914 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3915 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3916 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3917 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3918 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3919 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3920 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3921 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3922 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3923 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3924 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3925 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3926 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3927 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3928 the "New remote packets" section below.
3929
3930 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3931
3932 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3933 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3934 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3935 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3936
3937 * Observer mode
3938
3939 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3940 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3941 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3942 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3943 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3944 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3945 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3946
3947 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3948 current thread.
3949
3950 * New remote packets
3951
3952 qGetTIBAddr
3953
3954 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3955
3956 qRelocInsn
3957
3958 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3959 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3960 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3961 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3962 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3963 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3964
3965 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3966
3967 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3968
3969 qTSTMat
3970
3971 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3972 program.
3973
3974 qXfer:statictrace:read
3975
3976 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3977 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3978 to gdb's qSupported query.
3979
3980 QAllow
3981
3982 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3983
3984 QTDPsrc
3985
3986 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3987 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3988
3989 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3990 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3991 a directory.
3992
3993 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3994
3995 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3996 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3997 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3998 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3999
4000 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
4001 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
4002 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
4003 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
4004 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
4005 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
4006 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
4007
4008 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
4009 for static tracepoints support.
4010
4011 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
4012
4013 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
4014 it understands register description.
4015
4016 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
4017
4018 * X86 general purpose registers
4019
4020 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
4021 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
4022 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
4023 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
4024 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
4025
4026 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
4027 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
4028 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
4029 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
4030 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
4031 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
4032
4033 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
4034 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
4035 in the specified file.
4036
4037 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
4038 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
4039 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
4040 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
4041 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
4042 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
4043 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
4044 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
4045 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
4046 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
4047
4048 * New commands
4049
4050 eval template, expressions...
4051 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
4052 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
4053
4054 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
4055 show target-file-system-kind
4056 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
4057 names.
4058
4059 save breakpoints <filename>
4060 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
4061 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
4062 definitions, use the `source' command.
4063
4064 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
4065 is now deprecated.
4066
4067 info static-tracepoint-markers
4068 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
4069
4070 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
4071 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
4072 function, line, address, or marker ID.
4073
4074 set observer on|off
4075 show observer
4076 Enable and disable observer mode.
4077
4078 set may-write-registers on|off
4079 set may-write-memory on|off
4080 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
4081 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
4082 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
4083 set may-interrupt on|off
4084 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
4085 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
4086 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
4087 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
4088 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
4089 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
4090 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
4091
4092 set record memory-query on|off
4093 show record memory-query
4094 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
4095 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
4096
4097 * Changed commands
4098
4099 disassemble
4100 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
4101
4102 * Python scripting
4103
4104 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
4105 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
4106 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
4107 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
4108 GDB using Python' in the manual.
4109
4110 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
4111 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
4112 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
4113 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
4114
4115 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
4116 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
4117
4118 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
4119
4120 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
4121
4122 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
4123
4124 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
4125 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
4126 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
4127
4128 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
4129 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
4130 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
4131 regular breakpoints.
4132
4133 * New targets
4134
4135 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
4136
4137 * D language support.
4138 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
4139 language.
4140
4141 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
4142 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
4143 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
4144 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
4145 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
4146
4147 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
4148 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
4149 conditions of the form:
4150
4151 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
4152
4153 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
4154 interface mentioned above.
4155
4156 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
4157
4158 * C++ Improvements
4159
4160 ** Namespace Support
4161
4162 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
4163 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
4164 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
4165 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
4166 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
4167
4168 ** Bug Fixes
4169
4170 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
4171 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
4172 qualified name.
4173
4174 ** Cast Operators
4175
4176 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
4177 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
4178
4179 * New targets
4180
4181 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
4182 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
4183
4184 * New Simulators
4185
4186 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
4187 Renesas RX rx
4188
4189 * Multi-program debugging.
4190
4191 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
4192 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
4193 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
4194 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
4195 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
4196 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
4197 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
4198 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
4199
4200 * New tracing features
4201
4202 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
4203
4204 ** Trace state variables
4205
4206 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
4207 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
4208 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
4209 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
4210 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
4211 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
4212 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
4213 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
4214 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
4215 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
4216
4217 ** Fast tracepoints
4218
4219 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
4220 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
4221 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
4222 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
4223 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
4224 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
4225 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
4226 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
4227 the regular trace command.
4228
4229 ** Disconnected tracing
4230
4231 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
4232 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
4233 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
4234 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
4235 connection is lost unexpectedly.
4236
4237 ** Trace files
4238
4239 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
4240 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
4241 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
4242 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
4243 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
4244 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
4245 <name>".
4246
4247 ** Circular trace buffer
4248
4249 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
4250 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
4251 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
4252 not be available for all target agents.
4253
4254 * Changed commands
4255
4256 disassemble
4257 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
4258 the arguments to be comma-separated.
4259
4260 info variables
4261 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
4262 which only declare a variable are not shown.
4263
4264 source
4265 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
4266 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
4267 support.
4268
4269 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
4270 "set script-extension" (see below).
4271
4272 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4273
4274 record save [<FILENAME>]
4275 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
4276 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
4277
4278 record restore <FILENAME>
4279 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
4280 earlier time, for replay debugging.
4281
4282 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
4283 Add a new inferior.
4284
4285 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
4286 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
4287 inferior has loaded.
4288
4289 remove-inferior ID
4290 Remove an inferior.
4291
4292 maint info program-spaces
4293 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
4294
4295 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
4296 show remote interrupt-sequence
4297 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
4298 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
4299 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
4300 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
4301 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
4302
4303 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
4304 show remote interrupt-on-connect
4305 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
4306 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
4307 Linux kernel.
4308
4309 set remotebreak [on | off]
4310 show remotebreak
4311 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
4312
4313 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
4314 Create or modify a trace state variable.
4315
4316 info tvariables
4317 List trace state variables and their values.
4318
4319 delete tvariable $NAME ...
4320 Delete one or more trace state variables.
4321
4322 teval EXPR, ...
4323 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
4324 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
4325
4326 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
4327 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
4328
4329 * New expression syntax
4330
4331 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
4332 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
4333
4334 * New options
4335
4336 set follow-exec-mode new|same
4337 show follow-exec-mode
4338 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
4339 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
4340 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
4341
4342 set default-collect EXPR, ...
4343 show default-collect
4344 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
4345 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
4346 such as registers or a critical global variable.
4347
4348 set disconnected-tracing
4349 show disconnected-tracing
4350 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
4351 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
4352 upon disconnection.
4353
4354 set circular-trace-buffer
4355 show circular-trace-buffer
4356 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
4357 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
4358 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
4359 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
4360
4361 set script-extension off|soft|strict
4362 show script-extension
4363 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
4364 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
4365 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
4366 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
4367 evaluation failed.
4368 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
4369
4370 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
4371 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
4372 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
4373 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
4374 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
4375 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
4376 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
4377 is on.
4378
4379 * Python API Improvements
4380
4381 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
4382 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
4383 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
4384
4385 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
4386 `is_base_class' attribute.
4387
4388 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
4389
4390 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
4391 evaluate an expression.
4392
4393 * New remote packets
4394
4395 QTDV
4396 Define a trace state variable.
4397
4398 qTV
4399 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
4400
4401 QTDisconnected
4402 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
4403
4404 QTBuffer:circular
4405 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
4406
4407 qTfP, qTsP
4408 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
4409
4410 * Bug fixes
4411
4412 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
4413
4414 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
4415 much more reliable. In particular:
4416 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
4417 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
4418 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
4419 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
4420 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
4421 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
4422 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
4423 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
4424 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
4425 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
4426 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
4427 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
4428 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
4429 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
4430 non-threaded programs.
4431
4432 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
4433 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
4434 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
4435 executable program.
4436
4437 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
4438
4439 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
4440 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
4441 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
4442 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
4443 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
4444
4445 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
4446 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
4447 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
4448 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
4449 for tracepoint actions.
4450
4451 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
4452 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
4453 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
4454
4455 * Process record and replay
4456
4457 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
4458 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
4459 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
4460 execute commands.
4461
4462 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
4463 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
4464 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
4465 reverse execution.
4466
4467 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
4468 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4469 2.6.28 or later.
4470
4471 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
4472 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
4473 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
4474 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
4475 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
4476 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
4477 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
4478 the installation instructions for more information.
4479
4480 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
4481 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
4482 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
4483 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
4484
4485 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
4486 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
4487
4488 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
4489 now complete on file names.
4490
4491 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
4492 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
4493 For instance, consider:
4494
4495 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
4496 # struct example variable;
4497 (gdb) p variable.
4498
4499 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
4500 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
4501
4502 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
4503 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
4504
4505 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
4506 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
4507 macros.
4508
4509 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
4510 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
4511 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
4512
4513 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
4514 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
4515 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
4516 and simulator targets may also provide them.
4517
4518 * New remote packets
4519
4520 qSearch:memory:
4521 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4522
4523 QStartNoAckMode
4524 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
4525 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
4526 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
4527
4528 vKill
4529 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4530 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4531
4532 qXfer:osdata:read
4533 Obtains additional operating system information
4534
4535 qXfer:siginfo:read
4536 qXfer:siginfo:write
4537 Read or write additional signal information.
4538
4539 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4540
4541 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4542 packet that permitted the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4543 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4544
4545 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4546 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4547
4548 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4549 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4550 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4551
4552 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4553 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4554
4555 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4556
4557 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4558
4559 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4560 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4561
4562 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote protocol packet now allows passing a
4563 list of section offsets.
4564
4565 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4566 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4567 have also been fixed.
4568
4569 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4570 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4571 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4572
4573 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4574 example, given:
4575
4576 template<typename T> class C { };
4577 C<char const *> c;
4578
4579 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4580
4581 ptype C<char const *>
4582 ptype C<char const*>
4583 ptype C<const char *>
4584 ptype C<const char*>
4585
4586 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4587
4588 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4589 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4590
4591 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4592 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4593 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4594
4595 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4596 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4597
4598 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4599 gdbserver.
4600
4601 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4602 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4603
4604 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4605 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4606 as appropriate.
4607
4608 * Python scripting
4609
4610 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4611 available is determined at configure time.
4612
4613 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4614
4615 * Ada tasking support
4616
4617 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4618 been introduced:
4619
4620 info tasks
4621 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4622 info task N
4623 Print detailed information about task number N.
4624 task
4625 Print the task number of the current task.
4626 task N
4627 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4628
4629 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4630 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4631
4632 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4633
4634 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4635 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4636 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4637 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4638 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4639 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4640 below.
4641
4642 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4643 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4644 information.
4645
4646 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4647 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4648 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4649 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4650 more information.
4651
4652 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4653
4654 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4655 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4656 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4657 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4658 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4659
4660 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4661 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4662 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4663 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4664 --enable-targets configure option.
4665
4666 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4667
4668 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4669 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4670 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4671 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4672 section in the user manual for more information.
4673
4674 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4675 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4676 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4677 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4678 extensions on linux targets.
4679
4680 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4681
4682 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4683 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4684 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4685 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4686 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4687 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4688 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4689 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4690 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4691
4692 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4693 val1 [, val2, ...]
4694 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4695
4696 maint set python print-stack
4697 maint show python print-stack
4698 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4699
4700 python [CODE]
4701 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4702
4703 macro define
4704 macro list
4705 macro undef
4706 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4707 interactively.
4708
4709 info os processes
4710 Show operating system information about processes.
4711
4712 info inferiors
4713 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4714
4715 inferior NUM
4716 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4717
4718 detach inferior NUM
4719 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4720
4721 kill inferior NUM
4722 Kill inferior number NUM.
4723
4724 * New options
4725
4726 set spu stop-on-load
4727 show spu stop-on-load
4728 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4729
4730 set spu auto-flush-cache
4731 show spu auto-flush-cache
4732 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4733 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4734
4735 set sh calling-convention
4736 show sh calling-convention
4737 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4738
4739 set debug timestamp
4740 show debug timestamp
4741 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4742
4743 set disassemble-next-line
4744 show disassemble-next-line
4745 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4746 the debuggee stops.
4747
4748 set remote noack-packet
4749 show remote noack-packet
4750 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4751 under "New remote packets."
4752
4753 set remote query-attached-packet
4754 show remote query-attached-packet
4755 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4756
4757 set remote read-siginfo-object
4758 show remote read-siginfo-object
4759 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4760 packet.
4761
4762 set remote write-siginfo-object
4763 show remote write-siginfo-object
4764 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4765 packet.
4766
4767 set remote reverse-continue
4768 show remote reverse-continue
4769 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4770
4771 set remote reverse-step
4772 show remote reverse-step
4773 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4774
4775 set displaced-stepping
4776 show displaced-stepping
4777 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4778 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4779 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4780
4781 set debug displaced
4782 show debug displaced
4783 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4784
4785 maint set internal-error
4786 maint show internal-error
4787 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4788
4789 maint set internal-warning
4790 maint show internal-warning
4791 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4792
4793 set exec-wrapper
4794 show exec-wrapper
4795 unset exec-wrapper
4796 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4797
4798 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4799 show multiple-symbols
4800 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4801 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4802 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4803
4804 set breakpoint always-inserted
4805 show breakpoint always-inserted
4806 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4807 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4808 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4809
4810 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4811 show arm fallback-mode
4812 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4813 show arm force-mode
4814 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4815 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4816 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4817 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4818
4819 set disable-randomization
4820 show disable-randomization
4821 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4822 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4823 multiple debugging sessions.
4824
4825 set non-stop
4826 show non-stop
4827 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4828 a breakpoint.
4829
4830 set target-async
4831 show target-async
4832 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4833 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4834 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4835 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4836
4837 set target-wide-charset
4838 show target-wide-charset
4839 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4840 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4841
4842 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4843 show tcp auto-retry
4844 set tcp connect-timeout
4845 show tcp connect-timeout
4846 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4847 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4848 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4849
4850 set libthread-db-search-path
4851 show libthread-db-search-path
4852 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4853 libthread_db.
4854
4855 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4856 show schedule-multiple
4857 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4858 the current process.
4859
4860 set stack-cache
4861 show stack-cache
4862 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4863 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4864 affecting correctness.
4865
4866 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4867 show interactive-mode
4868 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4869 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4870 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4871 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4872 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4873
4874 * Removed commands
4875
4876 info forks
4877 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4878 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4879 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4880 command.
4881
4882 fork NUM
4883 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4884 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4885 alias for the `fork' command.
4886
4887 process PID
4888 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4889 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4890 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4891
4892 delete fork NUM
4893 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4894 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4895 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4896 fork' command.
4897
4898 detach fork NUM
4899 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4900 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4901 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4902 fork' command.
4903
4904 * New native configurations
4905
4906 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4907
4908 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4909
4910 * New targets
4911
4912 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4913 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4914 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4915 S+core 3 score-*-*
4916
4917 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4918 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4919
4920 * Removed commands
4921
4922 catch load
4923 catch unload
4924 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4925
4926 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4927
4928 * New native configurations
4929
4930 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4931 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4932
4933 * New targets
4934
4935 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4936 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4937
4938 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4939
4940 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4941 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4942 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4943 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4944
4945 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4946 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4947
4948 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4949 is resolved.
4950
4951 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4952 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4953 and in inlined functions.
4954
4955 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4956 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4957 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4958
4959 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4960
4961 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4962 registers on PowerPC targets.
4963
4964 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4965 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4966
4967 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4968 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4969
4970 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4971 extended-remote mode.
4972
4973 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4974 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4975 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4976 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4977
4978 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4979 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4980 target architectures.
4981
4982 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4983 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4984 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4985 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4986
4987 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4988 breakpoints now.
4989
4990 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4991 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4992 include:
4993 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4994 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4995 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4996 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4997 of an assignment
4998 - Improved command completion in Ada
4999 - Several bug fixes
5000
5001 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
5002 process.
5003
5004 * New commands
5005
5006 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
5007 show print frame-arguments
5008 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
5009 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
5010
5011 remote put
5012 remote get
5013 remote delete
5014 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5015
5016 * New MI commands
5017
5018 -target-file-put
5019 -target-file-get
5020 -target-file-delete
5021 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5022
5023 * New remote packets
5024
5025 vFile:open:
5026 vFile:close:
5027 vFile:pread:
5028 vFile:pwrite:
5029 vFile:unlink:
5030 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
5031
5032 vAttach
5033 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
5034 mode.
5035
5036 vRun
5037 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
5038
5039 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
5040
5041 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
5042 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
5043 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
5044
5045 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
5046 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
5047 -Bsymbolic linker option.
5048
5049 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
5050 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
5051 is not supported.
5052
5053 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
5054 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
5055
5056 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
5057 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
5058
5059 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
5060
5061 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
5062 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
5063 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
5064
5065 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
5066 automatically displayed as character or string data.
5067
5068 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
5069 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
5070 as strings.
5071
5072 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
5073 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
5074 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
5075
5076 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
5077 iWMMXt coprocessor.
5078
5079 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
5080 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
5081 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
5082
5083 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
5084
5085 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
5086
5087 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
5088 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
5089 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
5090
5091 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
5092 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
5093
5094 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
5095 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
5096 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
5097 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
5098 Windows and SymbianOS).
5099
5100 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
5101 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
5102
5103 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
5104 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
5105
5106 * New commands
5107
5108 set remoteflow
5109 show remoteflow
5110 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
5111 when debugging using remote targets.
5112
5113 set mem inaccessible-by-default
5114 show mem inaccessible-by-default
5115 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5116 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5117 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
5118 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
5119 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
5120
5121 set breakpoint auto-hw
5122 show breakpoint auto-hw
5123 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5124 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5125 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
5126 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
5127 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
5128 including "next" and "finish".
5129
5130 catch exception
5131 catch exception unhandled
5132 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
5133
5134 catch assert
5135 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
5136
5137 set sysroot
5138 show sysroot
5139 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
5140 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
5141 an alias to "set sysroot".
5142
5143 info spu
5144 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
5145 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
5146 architecture.
5147
5148 * New native configurations
5149
5150 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
5151
5152 set tdesc filename
5153 unset tdesc filename
5154 show tdesc filename
5155 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
5156 not query the target for its built-in description.
5157
5158 * New targets
5159
5160 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
5161 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
5162 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
5163
5164 * New remote packets
5165
5166 QPassSignals:
5167 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
5168 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
5169
5170 qXfer:features:read:
5171 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
5172 features.
5173
5174 qXfer:spu:read:
5175 qXfer:spu:write:
5176 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
5177 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
5178
5179 qXfer:libraries:read:
5180 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
5181 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
5182 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
5183 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
5184
5185 * Removed targets
5186
5187 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
5188
5189 alpha*-*-osf1*
5190 alpha*-*-osf2*
5191 d10v-*-*
5192 hppa*-*-hiux*
5193 i[34567]86-ncr-*
5194 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
5195 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
5196 i[34567]86-*-netware*
5197 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
5198 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
5199 i[34567]86-*-sco*
5200 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
5201 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
5202 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
5203 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
5204 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
5205 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
5206 i[34567]86-*-isc*
5207 m68*-cisco*-*
5208 m68*-tandem-*
5209 mips*-*-pe
5210 rs6000-*-lynxos*
5211 sh*-*-pe
5212
5213 * Other removed features
5214
5215 target abug
5216 target cpu32bug
5217 target est
5218 target rom68k
5219
5220 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
5221
5222 target hms
5223 target e7000
5224 target sh3
5225 target sh3e
5226
5227 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
5228 H8/300.
5229
5230 target ocd
5231
5232 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
5233 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
5234 interfaces.
5235
5236 DWARF 1 support
5237
5238 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
5239 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
5240
5241 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
5242
5243 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
5244 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
5245 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
5246 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
5247
5248 MIPS ".pdr" sections
5249
5250 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
5251 in debugging information.
5252
5253 Scheme support
5254
5255 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
5256 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
5257
5258 set mips stack-arg-size
5259 set mips saved-gpreg-size
5260
5261 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
5262
5263 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
5264
5265 * New targets
5266
5267 Xtensa xtensa-elf
5268 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
5269
5270 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
5271 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
5272 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
5273
5274 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
5275 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
5276 supported.
5277
5278 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
5279 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
5280
5281 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
5282 stub provides the required support.
5283
5284 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
5285 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
5286
5287 * New commands
5288
5289 set substitute-path
5290 unset substitute-path
5291 show substitute-path
5292 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
5293 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
5294 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
5295 between compilation and debugging.
5296
5297 set trace-commands
5298 show trace-commands
5299 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
5300 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
5301 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
5302
5303 * REMOVED features
5304
5305 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
5306
5307 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
5308 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
5309
5310 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
5311
5312 * New remote packets
5313
5314 qSupported:
5315 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
5316 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
5317 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
5318 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
5319 target.
5320
5321 qXfer:auxv:read:
5322 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
5323 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
5324
5325 qXfer:memory-map:read:
5326 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
5327 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
5328
5329 vFlashErase:
5330 vFlashWrite:
5331 vFlashDone:
5332 Erase and program a flash memory device.
5333
5334 * Removed remote packets
5335
5336 qPart:auxv:read:
5337 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
5338 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
5339
5340 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
5341
5342 * New targets
5343
5344 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
5345
5346 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5347
5348 * New commands
5349
5350 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
5351 only if it doesn't already have a value.
5352
5353 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
5354
5355 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
5356
5357 restart <n> Return the program state to a
5358 previously saved state.
5359
5360 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
5361
5362 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
5363
5364 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
5365 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
5366
5367 info forks List forks of the user program that
5368 are available to be debugged.
5369
5370 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
5371 forks of the user program that are
5372 available to be debugged.
5373
5374 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5375 that are available to be debugged (and
5376 kill the forked process).
5377
5378 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5379 that are available to be debugged (and
5380 allow the process to continue).
5381
5382 * New architecture
5383
5384 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
5385
5386 * Improved Windows host support
5387
5388 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
5389 native console support, and remote communications using either
5390 network sockets or serial ports.
5391
5392 * Improved Modula-2 language support
5393
5394 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
5395 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
5396 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
5397 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
5398 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
5399 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
5400
5401 * REMOVED features
5402
5403 The ARM rdi-share module.
5404
5405 The Netware NLM debug server.
5406
5407 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
5408
5409 * New native configurations
5410
5411 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
5412 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
5413
5414 * New targets
5415
5416 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5417
5418 * New command line options
5419
5420 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
5421 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
5422 the child (debugged) program exited with.
5423 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
5424 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
5425 specified multiple times and in conjunction
5426 with the --command (-x) option.
5427
5428 * Deprecated commands removed
5429
5430 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
5431 removed:
5432
5433 Command Replacement
5434 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
5435 othernames set arm disassembler
5436 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
5437 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
5438 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
5439 regs info registers
5440
5441 * New BSD user-level threads support
5442
5443 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
5444 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
5445 configurations are:
5446
5447 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5448 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
5449 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
5450
5451 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
5452 are not yet supported.
5453
5454 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
5455 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
5456
5457 * REMOVED configurations and files
5458
5459 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
5460 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5461 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
5462
5463 * New "set print array-indexes" command
5464
5465 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
5466 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
5467 behavior.
5468
5469 * VAX floating point support
5470
5471 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
5472
5473 * User-defined command support
5474
5475 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
5476 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
5477 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
5478
5479 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
5480
5481 * New command line option
5482
5483 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
5484 debugging.
5485
5486 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
5487
5488 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
5489 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
5490 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
5491 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
5492 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
5493
5494 * Internationalization
5495
5496 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
5497 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
5498 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
5499
5500 * Ada
5501
5502 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
5503 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
5504 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
5505
5506 * New native configurations
5507
5508 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
5509
5510 * Remote 'p' packet
5511
5512 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
5513 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
5514
5515 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
5516
5517 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5518 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
5519 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
5520 i386 application).
5521
5522 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the registers[]
5523 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
5524 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
5525 configurations:
5526
5527 hppa-*-hpux
5528 ia64-*-aix
5529 mips-*-irix*
5530 *-*-lynx
5531 mips-*-linux-gnu
5532 sds protocol
5533 xdr protocol
5534 powerpc bdm protocol
5535
5536 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5537 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5538
5539 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5540
5541 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5542 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5543 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5544 permanently REMOVED.
5545
5546 h8300-*-*
5547 mcore-*-*
5548 mn10300-*-*
5549 ns32k-*-*
5550 sh64-*-*
5551 v850-*-*
5552
5553 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5554
5555 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5556
5557 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5558 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5559 been fixed.
5560
5561 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5562
5563 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5564 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5565 IRIX long double values).
5566
5567 * VAX and "next"
5568
5569 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5570 command. This problem has been fixed.
5571
5572 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5573
5574 * Fix for ``many threads''
5575
5576 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5577 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5578 error message:
5579
5580 ptrace: No such process.
5581 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5582
5583 This problem has been fixed.
5584
5585 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5586
5587 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5588 GDB to dump core).
5589
5590 * New ``start'' command.
5591
5592 This command runs the program until the beginning of the main procedure.
5593
5594 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5595
5596 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5597 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5598 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5599
5600 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5601 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5602 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5603 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5604 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5605 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5606 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5607 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5608 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5609
5610 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5611
5612 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5613 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5614 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5615 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5616 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5617
5618 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5619 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5620 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5621
5622 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5623
5624 * New native configurations
5625
5626 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5627 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5628 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5629 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5630 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5631 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5632 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5633
5634 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5635
5636 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5637 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5638 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5639 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5640 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5641 work, was also included.
5642
5643 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5644 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5645
5646 h8300-*-*
5647 mcore-*-*
5648 mn10300-*-*
5649 ns32k-*-*
5650 sh64-*-*
5651 v850-*-*
5652 xstormy16-*-*
5653
5654 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5655 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5656
5657 * REMOVED configurations and files
5658
5659 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5660 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5661 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5662 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5663 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5664 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5665 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5666 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5667 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5668 sonymips mips-sony-*
5669 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5670
5671 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5672
5673 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5674
5675 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5676 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5677 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5678 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5679 with GDB".
5680
5681 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5682
5683 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5684 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5685 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5686 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5687 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5688 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5689 are created.
5690
5691 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5692
5693 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5694
5695 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5696 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5697 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5698
5699 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5700
5701 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5702 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5703
5704 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5705
5706 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5707 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5708 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5709
5710 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5711
5712 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5713 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5714
5715 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5716
5717 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5718 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5719 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5720
5721 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5722
5723 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5724 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5725 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5726
5727 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5728
5729 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5730
5731 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5732 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5733
5734 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5735
5736 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5737 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5738 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5739 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5740
5741 * Revised SPARC target
5742
5743 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5744 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5745 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5746 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5747 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5748
5749 * New C++ demangler
5750
5751 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5752 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5753 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5754 programs.
5755
5756 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5757
5758 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5759 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5760 encountered these.
5761
5762 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5763
5764 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5765 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5766 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5767 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5768 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5769 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5770 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5771 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5772 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5773
5774 * New native configurations
5775
5776 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5777 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5778 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5779 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5780 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5781
5782 * New debugging protocols
5783
5784 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5785
5786 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5787
5788 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5789 and its very obscure effect on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5790 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5791
5792 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5793
5794 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5795 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5796 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5797 permanently REMOVED.
5798
5799 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5800 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5801 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5802 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5803 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5804 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5805 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5806 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5807 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5808 sonymips mips-sony-*
5809 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5810
5811 * REMOVED configurations and files
5812
5813 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5814 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5815 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5816 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5817 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5818 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5819 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5820 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5821 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5822 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5823 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5824 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5825 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5826 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5827 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5828 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5829 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5830
5831 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5832
5833 * Objective-C
5834
5835 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5836 integrated into GDB.
5837
5838 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5839
5840 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5841 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5842 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5843 backtraces.
5844
5845 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5846 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5847 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5848
5849 * Hosted file I/O.
5850
5851 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5852 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5853 remote protocol documentation for details.
5854
5855 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5856
5857 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5858 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5859 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5860 ppc32 on ppc64).
5861
5862 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5863
5864 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5865 per-thread variables.
5866
5867 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5868
5869 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5870 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5871
5872 * Separate debug info.
5873
5874 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5875 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5876 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5877 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5878 and optional debug files.
5879
5880 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5881
5882 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5883 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5884 debugger.
5885
5886 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5887 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5888
5889 * Java
5890
5891 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5892 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5893 considered "useable".
5894
5895 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5896
5897 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5898 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5899 kernel.
5900
5901 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5902
5903 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5904 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5905
5906 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5907
5908 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5909 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5910 command.
5911
5912 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5913
5914 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5915 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5916
5917 * Profiling support
5918
5919 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5920 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5921 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5922 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5923 data, for more informative profiling results.
5924
5925 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5926
5927 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5928 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5929 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5930
5931 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5932 removed.
5933
5934 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5935 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5936 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5937 in a subsequent -var-update.
5938
5939 * New native configurations.
5940
5941 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5942
5943 * Multi-arched targets.
5944
5945 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5946 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5947
5948 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5949
5950 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5951 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5952 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5953 permanently REMOVED.
5954
5955 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5956 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5957 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5958 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5959 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5960 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5961 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5962 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5963 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5964 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5965 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5966 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5967
5968 * REMOVED configurations and files
5969
5970 V850EA ISA
5971 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5972 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5973 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5974 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5975 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5976 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5977 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5978 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5979 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5980 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5981 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5982 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5983 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5984
5985 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5986
5987 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5988 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5989 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5990 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5991 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5992
5993 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5994
5995 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5996
5997 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5998 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5999 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
6000 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
6001 shared libs like mad''.
6002
6003 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6004
6005 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
6006 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
6007 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
6008 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6009
6010 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
6011
6012 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
6013 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
6014 they expand.
6015
6016 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
6017 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
6018
6019 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
6020 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
6021
6022 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
6023 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
6024 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
6025 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
6026
6027 * Multi-arched targets.
6028
6029 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
6030 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
6031 NEC V850 v850-*-*
6032 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
6033 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
6034 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
6035
6036 * New targets.
6037
6038 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
6039
6040
6041 * New native configurations
6042
6043 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
6044 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
6045 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
6046 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
6047
6048 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6049
6050 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6051 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6052 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6053 permanently REMOVED.
6054
6055 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6056 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6057 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
6058 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6059 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6060 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6061 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
6062 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
6063 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
6064 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
6065 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
6066 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
6067 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6068
6069 * OBSOLETE languages
6070
6071 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
6072
6073 * REMOVED configurations and files
6074
6075 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6076 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6077 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6078 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6079 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6080
6081 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6082
6083 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
6084
6085 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
6086 commands. The default is 1024.
6087
6088 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
6089
6090 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
6091
6092 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
6093
6094 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
6095 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
6096 from a file into memory (restore).
6097
6098 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
6099
6100 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
6101 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
6102 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
6103
6104 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
6105
6106 * New targets.
6107
6108 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
6109
6110 * Bug fixes
6111
6112 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
6113 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
6114 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
6115
6116 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
6117 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
6118 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
6119
6120 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
6121 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
6122 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
6123
6124 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
6125 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
6126 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
6127
6128 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
6129
6130 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
6131
6132 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
6133 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
6134 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
6135 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
6136 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
6137 (notably embedded) targets.
6138
6139 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
6140
6141 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
6142 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
6143 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
6144 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
6145
6146 * New command line option
6147
6148 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
6149
6150 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
6151
6152 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
6153 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
6154 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
6155 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
6156 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
6157 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
6158 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
6159 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
6160 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
6161 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
6162
6163 * Changes in ARM configurations.
6164
6165 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
6166 configuration is fully multi-arch.
6167
6168 * New native configurations
6169
6170 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
6171 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
6172 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
6173 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
6174
6175 * New targets
6176
6177 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
6178
6179 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6180
6181 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6182 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6183 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6184 permanently REMOVED.
6185
6186 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6187 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6188 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6189 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6190 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6191
6192 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6193
6194 * REMOVED configurations and files
6195
6196 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6197 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6198 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6199 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6200 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6201 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6202 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6203 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6204 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6205 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6206 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6207 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6208 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
6209
6210 * Changes to command line processing
6211
6212 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
6213 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
6214
6215 * Changes to key bindings
6216
6217 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
6218
6219 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
6220
6221 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
6222
6223 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
6224 corrupted.
6225
6226 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
6227
6228 Numerous documentation fixes.
6229
6230 Numerous testsuite fixes.
6231
6232 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
6233
6234 * New native configurations
6235
6236 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
6237 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
6238 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
6239 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6240 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
6241 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
6242
6243 * New targets
6244
6245 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
6246 CRIS cris-axis
6247 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
6248
6249 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6250
6251 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
6252 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6253 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6254 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6255 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6256 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6257 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6258 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6259 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6260 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6261 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6262 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6263 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6264 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
6265
6266 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
6267 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
6268
6269 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6270 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6271 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6272 permanently REMOVED.
6273
6274 * REMOVED configurations and files
6275
6276 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6277 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6278 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
6279 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6280 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
6281 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
6282
6283 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
6284
6285 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
6286 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
6287 present.
6288
6289 * Other news:
6290
6291 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
6292
6293 * The MI enabled by default.
6294
6295 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
6296 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
6297 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
6298 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
6299 which is now deprecated.
6300
6301 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
6302
6303 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
6304 main features are supported:
6305
6306 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
6307
6308 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
6309 extension;
6310
6311 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
6312
6313 - a Pascal expression parser.
6314
6315 However, some important features are not yet supported.
6316
6317 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
6318
6319 - there are some problems with boolean types;
6320
6321 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
6322 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
6323
6324 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
6325
6326 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
6327
6328 * Changes in completion.
6329
6330 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
6331 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
6332 users expect at the shell prompt.
6333
6334 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
6335 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
6336 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
6337 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
6338 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
6339 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
6340 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
6341
6342 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
6343
6344 * New platform-independent commands:
6345
6346 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
6347 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
6348 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
6349
6350 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
6351
6352 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
6353 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
6354 many threads as your system allows you to have.
6355
6356 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
6357
6358 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
6359 multi-threaded programs though.
6360
6361 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
6362
6363 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
6364
6365 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
6366 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
6367 supported.)
6368
6369 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
6370
6371 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
6372 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
6373 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
6374 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
6375 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
6376 registers.
6377
6378 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
6379 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
6380 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
6381
6382 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
6383
6384 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
6385 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
6386
6387 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
6388 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
6389 IDT.
6390
6391 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
6392 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
6393 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
6394 a given linear address.
6395
6396 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
6397 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
6398 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
6399
6400 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
6401
6402 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
6403
6404 * Changes in documentation.
6405
6406 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
6407 Documentation License.
6408
6409 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6410 manual.
6411
6412 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
6413
6414 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6415 manual.
6416
6417 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
6418 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
6419 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
6420
6421 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
6422
6423 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
6424 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
6425 contents of this file.
6426
6427 * gdba.el deleted
6428
6429 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
6430
6431 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
6432
6433 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
6434
6435 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
6436 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
6437 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
6438 greater level of detail.
6439
6440 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
6441
6442 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
6443 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
6444 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
6445 written.
6446
6447 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
6448
6449 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
6450 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
6451 machines ``out of the box''.
6452
6453 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
6454 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
6455 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
6456 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
6457 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
6458
6459 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
6460 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
6461 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
6462 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
6463 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
6464
6465 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
6466 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
6467 also works.
6468
6469 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
6470 GDB.
6471
6472 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
6473 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
6474 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
6475 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
6476
6477 * New native configurations
6478
6479 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
6480 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6481
6482 * New targets
6483
6484 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
6485 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
6486 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
6487 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6488
6489 * OBSOLETE configurations
6490
6491 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6492 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6493 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
6494 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6495 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
6496
6497 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6498 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6499 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6500 be permanently REMOVED.
6501
6502 * Gould support removed
6503
6504 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
6505
6506 * New features for SVR4
6507
6508 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
6509 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
6510 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
6511
6512 * Many C++ enhancements
6513
6514 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
6515 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
6516
6517 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
6518
6519 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
6520 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
6521 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
6522 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
6523
6524 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
6525 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
6526
6527 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6528
6529 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6530 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6531 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6532
6533 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6534 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6535
6536 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6537
6538 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6539 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6540 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6541
6542 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6543
6544 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6545 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6546 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6547
6548 * ``apropos'' command added.
6549
6550 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6551 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6552 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6553
6554 * New MI interface
6555
6556 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6557 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6558 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6559 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6560 enabled by configuring with:
6561
6562 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6563
6564 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6565
6566 * New native configurations
6567
6568 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6569 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6570 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6571
6572 * New targets
6573
6574 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6575 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6576 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6577
6578 * OBSOLETE configurations
6579
6580 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6581
6582 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6583 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6584 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6585 be permanently REMOVED.
6586
6587 * ANSI/ISO C
6588
6589 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6590 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6591 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6592 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6593 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6594 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6595 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6596 already.
6597
6598 * Readline 2.2
6599
6600 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6601
6602 * set extension-language
6603
6604 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6605 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6606 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6607 set extension-language .c c++
6608 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6609 and their associated languages.
6610
6611 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6612
6613 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6614 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6615 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6616
6617 set processor NAME
6618
6619 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6620 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6621
6622 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6623 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6624 403 IBM PowerPC 403
6625 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6626 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6627 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6628 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6629 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6630 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6631 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6632 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6633
6634 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6635 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6636 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6637 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6638
6639 * HP-UX support
6640
6641 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6642 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6643 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6644 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6645 for xdb and dbx commands.
6646
6647 * Catchpoints
6648
6649 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6650 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6651 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6652
6653 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6654 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6655 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6656
6657 * Debugging across forks
6658
6659 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6660 in the inferior.
6661
6662 * TUI
6663
6664 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6665 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6666 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6667
6668 * GDB remote protocol additions
6669
6670 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6671 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6672 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6673 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6674
6675 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6676 full 64-bit address. The command
6677
6678 set remoteaddresssize 32
6679
6680 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6681 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6682 will be discarded.
6683
6684 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6685 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6686
6687 maint packet heythere
6688
6689 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6690 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6691 time.
6692
6693 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6694 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6695 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6696
6697 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6698
6699 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6700 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6701 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6702
6703 * mask-address variable for Mips
6704
6705 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6706 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6707 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6708
6709 * Higher serial baud rates
6710
6711 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6712 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6713 to achieve all of these rates.)
6714
6715 * i960 simulator
6716
6717 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6718 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6719
6720
6721 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6722
6723 * New native configurations
6724
6725 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6726 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6727 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6728 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6729 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6730 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6731 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6732
6733 * New targets
6734
6735 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6736 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6737 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6738 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6739 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6740 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6741 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6742 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6743 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6744 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6745 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6746
6747 * New debugging protocols
6748
6749 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6750 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6751 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6752 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6753 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6754 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6755
6756 * DWARF 2
6757
6758 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6759 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6760 information.
6761
6762 * Java frontend
6763
6764 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6765 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6766
6767 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6768
6769 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6770 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6771 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6772
6773 * Live range splitting
6774
6775 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6776 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6777 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6778
6779 * Hurd support
6780
6781 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6782 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6783
6784 * ARM Thumb support
6785
6786 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6787 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6788 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6789 accordingly.
6790
6791 * MIPS16 support
6792
6793 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6794 instruction set.
6795
6796 * Overlay support
6797
6798 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6799 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6800 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6801 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6802 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6803 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6804
6805 * info symbol
6806
6807 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6808 the symbol at the specified address.
6809
6810 * Trace support
6811
6812 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6813 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6814 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6815 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6816 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6817
6818 * MIPS simulator
6819
6820 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6821 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6822 of most MIPS variants.
6823
6824 * Sparc simulator
6825
6826 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6827 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6828 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6829
6830 * set architecture
6831
6832 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6833 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6834 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6835 the possible architectures.
6836
6837 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6838
6839 * New native configurations
6840
6841 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6842 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6843 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6844 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6845 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6846 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6847
6848 * New targets
6849
6850 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6851 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6852 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6853 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6854 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6855 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6856 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6857
6858 * PowerPC simulator
6859
6860 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6861 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6862 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6863 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6864 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6865
6866 * Solaris 2.5
6867
6868 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6869
6870 * Windows 95/NT native
6871
6872 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6873 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6874 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6875 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6876 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6877
6878 * dont-repeat command
6879
6880 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6881 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6882 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6883 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6884
6885 * Send break instead of ^C
6886
6887 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6888 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6889 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6890
6891 * Remote protocol timeout
6892
6893 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6894 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6895 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6896
6897 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6898
6899 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6900 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6901 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6902 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6903 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6904
6905 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6906 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6907 automatically on hpux10.
6908
6909 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6910
6911 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6912
6913 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6914
6915 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6916 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6917 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6918 every character. The default value is 1050.
6919
6920 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6921
6922 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6923 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6924 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6925 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6926 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6927 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6928
6929 * Speedups for remote debugging
6930
6931 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6932 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6933 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6934
6935 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6936
6937 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6938 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6939
6940 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6941
6942 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6943
6944 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6945 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6946
6947 * Remote targets use caching
6948
6949 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6950 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6951 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6952 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6953 off' turns the data cache off.
6954
6955 * Remote targets may have threads
6956
6957 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6958 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6959 gdb/remote.c for details.
6960
6961 * NetROM support
6962
6963 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6964 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6965 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6966 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6967 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6968 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6969 sequence is something like
6970
6971 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6972 load <prog>
6973 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6974
6975 * Macintosh host
6976
6977 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6978 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6979 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6980 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6981 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6982 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6983 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6984 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6985
6986 * Autoconf
6987
6988 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6989 but does simplify configuration and building.
6990
6991 * hpux10
6992
6993 GDB now supports hpux10.
6994
6995 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6996
6997 * New native configurations
6998
6999 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
7000 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
7001 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
7002 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
7003
7004 * New targets
7005
7006 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
7007 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
7008 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
7009 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
7010 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7011
7012 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
7013
7014 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
7015 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
7016 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
7017 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
7018 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
7019
7020 * Arguments to user-defined commands
7021
7022 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
7023 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
7024 trivial example:
7025 define adder
7026 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
7027
7028 To execute the command use:
7029 adder 1 2 3
7030
7031 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
7032 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
7033 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
7034
7035 * New `if' and `while' commands
7036
7037 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
7038 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
7039 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
7040 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
7041 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
7042 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
7043 if the expression is zero.
7044
7045 * Fortran source language mode
7046
7047 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
7048 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
7049 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
7050 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
7051 Fortran compilers.
7052
7053 * Better HPUX support
7054
7055 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
7056 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
7057 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
7058 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
7059 that behavior do the following before running the program:
7060
7061 adb -w a.out
7062 __dld_flags?W 0x5
7063 control-d
7064
7065 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
7066 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
7067
7068 adb -w a.out
7069 __dld_flags?W 0x4
7070 control-d
7071
7072 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
7073 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
7074 external linkage.
7075
7076 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
7077 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
7078
7079 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
7080
7081 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
7082 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
7083 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
7084 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
7085 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
7086 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
7087
7088 * New DOS host serial code
7089
7090 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
7091 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
7092 a PC's serial port.
7093
7094 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
7095
7096 * New "complete" command
7097
7098 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
7099 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
7100
7101 * Trailing space optional in prompt
7102
7103 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
7104 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
7105
7106 * Breakpoint hit counts
7107
7108 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
7109 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
7110 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
7111 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
7112 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
7113 that breakpoint.
7114
7115 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
7116
7117 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
7118 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
7119 arrays actually contain only short strings.
7120
7121 * Shared library breakpoints
7122
7123 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
7124 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
7125
7126 * Hardware watchpoints
7127
7128 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
7129 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
7130
7131 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
7132
7133 * Annotations
7134
7135 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
7136 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
7137
7138 * Improved Irix 5 support
7139
7140 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
7141
7142 * Improved HPPA support
7143
7144 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
7145
7146 * New native configurations
7147
7148 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
7149 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
7150 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
7151 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
7152
7153 * New targets
7154
7155 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7156 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
7157 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
7158
7159 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
7160
7161 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
7162 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
7163
7164 * Fixes
7165
7166 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
7167 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
7168
7169 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
7170
7171 * Irix 5 is now supported
7172
7173 * HPPA support
7174
7175 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
7176 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
7177 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
7178 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
7179 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
7180
7181
7182 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
7183
7184 * User visible changes:
7185
7186 * Remote Debugging
7187
7188 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
7189 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
7190 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
7191 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
7192 debugging info for the mips target).
7193
7194 * DEC Alpha native support
7195
7196 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
7197 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
7198 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
7199 Alpha-specific notes.
7200
7201 * Preliminary thread implementation
7202
7203 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
7204
7205 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
7206
7207 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
7208 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
7209 for details).
7210
7211 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
7212
7213 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
7214 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
7215 call methods, ...etc.
7216
7217 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
7218
7219 * User visible changes:
7220
7221 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
7222 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
7223 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
7224 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
7225
7226 Filename completion now works.
7227
7228 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
7229 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
7230 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
7231
7232 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
7233 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
7234 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
7235 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
7236 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
7237
7238 * DEC alpha support
7239
7240 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
7241 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
7242
7243
7244 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
7245
7246 * Testsuite
7247
7248 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
7249 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
7250 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
7251
7252 * C++ demangling
7253
7254 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
7255 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
7256 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
7257 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
7258 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
7259
7260 * Simulators
7261
7262 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
7263 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
7264 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
7265
7266 * New targets supported
7267
7268 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7269 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7270 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
7271 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7272 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
7273
7274 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
7275 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
7276 GO32 memory extender.
7277
7278 * New remote protocols
7279
7280 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
7281
7282 * New source languages supported
7283
7284 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
7285 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
7286 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
7287
7288
7289 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
7290
7291 * HP Precision Architecture supported
7292
7293 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
7294 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
7295 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
7296 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
7297 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
7298 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
7299
7300 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
7301
7302 * Faster and better demangling
7303
7304 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
7305 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
7306 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
7307 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
7308 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
7309 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
7310 symbol lookups.
7311
7312 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
7313 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
7314 compiler does not actually implement.
7315
7316 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
7317
7318 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
7319 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
7320 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
7321 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
7322 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
7323 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
7324 fix.
7325
7326 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
7327 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
7328
7329 * Improved configure script
7330
7331 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
7332 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
7333 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
7334 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
7335
7336 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
7337 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
7338 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
7339 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
7340 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
7341 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
7342
7343 * Documentation improvements
7344
7345 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
7346 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
7347 before submitting changes.
7348
7349 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
7350 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
7351 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
7352 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
7353 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
7354
7355 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
7356 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
7357 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
7358 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
7359 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
7360 around this problem.
7361
7362 * New features
7363
7364 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
7365 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
7366 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
7367 the target program.
7368
7369 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
7370 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
7371
7372 * New native hosts supported
7373
7374 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
7375 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
7376
7377 * New targets supported
7378
7379 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
7380
7381 * New file formats supported
7382
7383 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
7384 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
7385
7386 * Major bug fixes
7387
7388 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
7389
7390 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
7391 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
7392
7393 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
7394 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
7395 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
7396
7397 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
7398 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
7399
7400 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
7401 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
7402 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
7403 libraries.
7404
7405 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
7406 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
7407 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
7408 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
7409 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
7410
7411 * Internal improvements
7412
7413 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
7414 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
7415
7416 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
7417 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
7418 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
7419 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
7420 shared code that handles any of them.
7421
7422 * New command line options
7423
7424 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
7425
7426 * Mmalloc licensing
7427
7428 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
7429 General Public License.
7430
7431 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
7432
7433 * Host/native/target split
7434
7435 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
7436 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
7437 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
7438 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
7439 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
7440
7441 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
7442 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
7443 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
7444 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
7445 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
7446 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
7447 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
7448
7449 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
7450 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
7451 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
7452
7453 * New hosts supported
7454
7455 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
7456 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7457 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
7458
7459 * New targets supported
7460
7461 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7462 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
7463
7464 * New native hosts supported
7465
7466 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7467 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
7468 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
7469
7470 * New file formats supported
7471
7472 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
7473 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
7474 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
7475
7476 * New commands
7477
7478 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
7479 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
7480 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
7481
7482 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
7483
7484 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
7485 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
7486 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
7487 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
7488
7489 * C++ improvements
7490
7491 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
7492 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
7493 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
7494
7495 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
7496
7497 * Major bug fixes
7498
7499 The crash that occurred when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
7500 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
7501 by the compiler.
7502
7503 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
7504 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
7505
7506 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
7507 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
7508 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
7509 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
7510 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
7511 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
7512
7513 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
7514 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
7515 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
7516 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
7517
7518 * AMD 29k support
7519
7520 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
7521 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
7522 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
7523 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
7524 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
7525
7526 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
7527 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7528 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7529 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7530
7531 * Remote interfaces
7532
7533 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7534 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7535 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7536 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7537 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7538 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7539 each instruction being stepped through.
7540
7541 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7542 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7543
7544 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7545 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7546 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7547 processor with a serial port.
7548
7549 * Configuration
7550
7551 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7552 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7553 supported, and what files each one uses.
7554
7555 * Library changes
7556
7557 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7558 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7559 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7560 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7561
7562 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7563 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7564 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7565 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7566
7567 * Documentation
7568
7569 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7570 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7571 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7572 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7573 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7574 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7575
7576 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7577
7578
7579 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7580
7581 * Better support for C++ function names
7582
7583 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7584 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7585 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7586 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7587 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7588
7589 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7590 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7591 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7592 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7593 for the list of formats.
7594
7595 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7596
7597 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7598 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7599 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7600 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compiling gdb/symtab.c. The
7601 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7602 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7603 this problem.)
7604
7605 * New 'maintenance' command
7606
7607 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7608 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7609 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7610
7611 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7612 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7613 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7614 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7615 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7616 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7617
7618 The following commands are new:
7619
7620 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7621 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7622 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7623
7624 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7625
7626 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7627 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7628 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7629 read after argv processing.
7630
7631 * New hosts supported
7632
7633 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7634
7635 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7636
7637 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7638 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7639 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7640 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7641 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7642 It costs extra.
7643
7644 * New targets supported
7645
7646 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7647
7648 * More smarts about finding #include files
7649
7650 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7651 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7652 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7653 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7654 the one that contains your sources.
7655
7656 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7657 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7658 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7659
7660 * Interesting infernals change
7661
7662 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7663 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7664 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7665 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7666
7667 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7668
7669 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7670 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7671 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7672
7673 See the ChangeLog for details.
7674
7675 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7676
7677 * New machines supported (host and target)
7678
7679 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7680
7681 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7682
7683 * New malloc package
7684
7685 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7686 Mmalloc is capable of handling multiple heaps of memory. It is also
7687 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7688 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7689 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7690 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7691
7692 * info proc
7693
7694 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7695 'help info proc' for details.
7696
7697 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7698
7699 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7700 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7701 possible.
7702
7703 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7704
7705 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7706 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7707 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7708 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7709 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7710 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7711
7712 * Cross byte order fixes
7713
7714 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7715 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7716
7717 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7718
7719 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7720 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7721 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7722 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7723 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7724 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7725 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7726 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7727 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7728 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7729
7730 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7731 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7732 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7733 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7734
7735 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7736 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7737 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7738 use is:
7739
7740 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7741
7742 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7743 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7744 shared across multiple host platforms.
7745
7746 * longjmp() handling
7747
7748 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7749 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7750 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7751 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7752
7753 * Solaris 2.0
7754
7755 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7756 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7757 reading symbols.
7758
7759 * Bug fixes
7760
7761 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7762 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7763 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7764
7765 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7766
7767 * New machines supported (host and target)
7768
7769 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7770 (except core files)
7771 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7772 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7773
7774 * New machines supported (target)
7775
7776 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7777
7778 * C++ support
7779
7780 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7781 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7782 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7783
7784 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7785 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7786 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7787 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7788 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7789 released.
7790
7791 * New features for SVR4
7792
7793 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7794 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7795 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7796
7797 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7798 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7799 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7800
7801 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7802 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7803
7804 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7805
7806 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7807 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7808 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7809 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7810 same code linked statically.
7811
7812 * New Getopt
7813
7814 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7815 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7816 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7817 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7818 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7819 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7820
7821 * Bugs fixed
7822
7823 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7824 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7825 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7826
7827
7828 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7829
7830 * New machines supported (host and target)
7831
7832 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7833 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7834 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7835
7836 * Almost SCO Unix support
7837
7838 We had hoped to support:
7839 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7840 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7841 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7842 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7843
7844 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7845
7846 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7847 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7848 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7849 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7850 reqired (if any).
7851
7852 * New Readline
7853
7854 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7855 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7856 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7857
7858 * Bugs fixed
7859
7860 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7861 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7862 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7863
7864 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7865
7866 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7867 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7868 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7869
7870 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7871 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7872 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7873 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7874 version 2.
7875
7876 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7877 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7878 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7879 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7880 situation somewhat.
7881
7882 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7883 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7884 methods.
7885
7886 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7887 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7888 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7889
7890
7891 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7892
7893 * Improved configuration
7894
7895 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7896 Porting BFD is simpler.
7897
7898 * Stepping improved
7899
7900 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7901 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7902 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7903 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7904
7905 * Bug fixing
7906
7907 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7908
7909 * New host supported (not target)
7910
7911 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7912
7913
7914 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7915
7916 * Multiple source language support
7917
7918 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7919 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7920 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7921 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7922 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7923 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7924
7925 * GDB and Modula-2
7926
7927 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7928 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7929 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7930 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7931
7932 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7933 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7934 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7935
7936 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7937 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7938
7939 * set write on/off
7940
7941 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7942 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7943 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7944 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7945 effect immediately.
7946
7947 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7948
7949 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7950 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7951 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7952 examining core files.
7953
7954 * set listsize
7955
7956 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7957 The default is 10.
7958
7959 * New machines supported (host and target)
7960
7961 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7962 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7963 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7964
7965 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7966
7967 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7968
7969 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7970
7971 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7972 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7973 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7974
7975 * New remote interfaces
7976
7977 AMD 29000 Adapt
7978 AMD 29000 Minimon
7979
7980
7981 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7982
7983 * New Facilities
7984
7985 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7986
7987 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7988 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7989 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7990 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7991 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7992 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7993 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7994 stub on the target system.
7995
7996 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7997
7998 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7999 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
8000 object file types such as a.out and coff.
8001
8002 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
8003 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
8004
8005
8006 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
8007
8008 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
8009 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
8010
8011 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
8012 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
8013 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
8014
8015 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
8016 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
8017 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
8018 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
8019
8020 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
8021 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
8022 it is already running. Default is ON.
8023
8024 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
8025 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
8026 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
8027 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
8028 Default is ON.
8029
8030 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
8031 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
8032 or the value of the environment variable
8033 GDBHISTFILE.
8034
8035 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
8036 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
8037 HISTSIZE.
8038
8039 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
8040 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
8041 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
8042
8043 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
8044 history expansion will be performed on
8045 command line input. The default is OFF.
8046
8047 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
8048 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
8049 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
8050
8051 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
8052 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
8053 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8054 variable TERM.
8055
8056 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
8057 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
8058 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8059 variable TERM.
8060
8061 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
8062 ``set width'' instead.
8063
8064 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
8065 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
8066 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
8067 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
8068
8069 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
8070 is OFF.
8071
8072 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
8073 "raw" form if off.
8074
8075 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
8076 like instructions.
8077
8078 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
8079
8080
8081 * Support for Epoch Environment.
8082
8083 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
8084 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
8085 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
8086 window.
8087
8088
8089 * Support for Shared Libraries
8090
8091 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
8092 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
8093 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
8094 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
8095 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
8096 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
8097 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
8098 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
8099
8100 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
8101 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
8102 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
8103
8104 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
8105
8106
8107 * Watchpoints
8108
8109 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
8110 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
8111 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
8112 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
8113 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
8114 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
8115
8116 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
8117
8118 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
8119
8120 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8121 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8122 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8123
8124
8125 * C++ multiple inheritance
8126
8127 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
8128 for C++ programs.
8129
8130 * C++ exception handling
8131
8132 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
8133 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
8134 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
8135 handler's context).
8136
8137 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
8138 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
8139 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
8140
8141 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
8142 current stack frame.
8143
8144
8145 * Minor command changes
8146
8147 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
8148 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
8149 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
8150
8151 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
8152 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
8153 frames without printing.
8154
8155 * New directory command
8156
8157 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
8158 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
8159 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
8160 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
8161 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
8162
8163 * Configuring GDB for compilation
8164
8165 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
8166 for more details.
8167
8168 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
8169 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
8170 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
8171 where the program that you are debugging will run.