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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
3b2f13ff 4*** Changes since GDB 7.9
df8411da 5
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6* Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
7 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
8 including advance SIMD instructions.
9
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10* GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
11 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
12 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
13 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
14 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
15 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
16 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
3b2f13ff 17
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18* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
19 cpu information :
20 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
21
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22* GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
23 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
24 remote serial I/O.
25
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26* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
27 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
28 and may include things like its command line arguments.
29
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30* The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
31 is now available on all platforms.
32
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33* Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
34 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
35 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
36 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
37 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
38 backward compatibility.
39
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40* The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
41 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
42 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
43 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
44
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45* GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
46 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
47 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
48 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
49 packets" below.
50
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51* The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
52
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53* GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
54
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55* Guile Scripting
56
57 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
58
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59* Python Scripting
60
61 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
62 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
63 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
d11916aa 64 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
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65 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
66 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
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67 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
68 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
69 "const" version of the value respectively.
3a8b707a 70
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71* New commands
72
73maint print symbol-cache
74 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
75
76maint print symbol-cache-statistics
77 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
78
79maint flush-symbol-cache
80 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
81
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82record btrace bts
83record bts
84 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
85
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86compile print
87 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
88
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89tui enable
90tui disable
91 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
92
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93* New options
94
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95set max-completions
96show max-completions
97 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
98 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
99 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
100 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
101
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102maint set symbol-cache-size
103maint show symbol-cache-size
104 Control the size of the symbol cache.
105
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106set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
107 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
108 BTS format.
109 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
110 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
111
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112* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
113 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
114
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115* Python/Guile scripting
116
117 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
118 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
119
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120* New remote packets
121
122qXfer:btrace-conf:read
123 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
124
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125Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
126 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
127
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128swbreak stop reason
129 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
130 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
131 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
132 mode operation.
133
134hwbreak stop reason
135 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
136 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
137
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138vFile:fstat:
139 Return information about files on the remote system.
140
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141qXfer:exec-file:read
142 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
143 create a process running on the remote system.
144
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145fork stop reason
146 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
147
148vfork stop reason
149 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
150
151vforkdone stop reason
152 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
153 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
154
155fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
156 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
157 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
158 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
159 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
160 whether these features are enabled.
161
162* Extended-remote fork events
163
164 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
165 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
166 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
167 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
168
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169* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
170 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
171 the btrace record target.
172 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
173
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174* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
175 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
176
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177* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
178 targets.
179
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180* Removed command line options
181
182-xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
183
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184* Removed targets and native configurations
185
186HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
187Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
188
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189*** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
190
191* Python Scripting
192
193 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
194
3b2f13ff 195*** Changes in GDB 7.9
919b9a93 196
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197* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
198
5f3b99cf 199* Python Scripting
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200
201 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
202 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
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203 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
204 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
a0be3e44 205 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
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206 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
207 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
86e4ed39 208 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
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209 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
210 selecting a new file to debug.
02be9a71 211 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
6dddd6a5 212 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
5f3b99cf 213
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214 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
215 inferior.
216
217 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
218 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
219 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
220 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
221
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222* New Python-based convenience functions:
223
224 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
225 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
226 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
227 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
228
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229* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
230 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
231 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
232 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
233 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
234 interface with this new feature are:
235
236 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
237 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
238
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239* New commands
240
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241demangle [-l language] [--] name
242 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
243 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
244 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
245 as "maint demangler-warning".
246
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247queue-signal signal-name-or-number
248 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
249
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250add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
251 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
252 scripts.
253
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254maint print user-registers
255 List all currently available "user" registers.
256
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257compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
258 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
259 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
260
261compile file [-r|-raw] filename
262 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
263 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
264 provided.
265
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266* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
267 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
268 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
269 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
270 at resume time.
271
272* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
273 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
274 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
275 switched threads meanwhile.
276
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277* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
278
279 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
280 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
281 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
282 is now the default mode.
283
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284* New options
285
286set debug symbol-lookup
287show debug symbol-lookup
288 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
289
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290* MI changes
291
292 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
293 inferiors that have exited.
294
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295* New targets
296
297MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
298
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299* Removed targets
300
301Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
302
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303Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
304SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
305SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
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306VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
307VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
3831839c 308
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309* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
310 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
311 its alias "share", instead.
312
919b9a93 313*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 314
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315* New command line options
316
317-D data-directory
318 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
319
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320* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
321 as specified in ISO C99.
322
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323* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
324 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 325
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326* Guile scripting
327
328 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
329 available is determined at configure time.
330 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
331 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
332
333* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
334
335guile [code]
336gu [code]
337 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
338
339guile-repl
340gr
341 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
342
343info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
344 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
345
346* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
347 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
348
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349* New options
350
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351set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
352show print symbol-loading
353 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
354 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
355 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
356 becomes less useful.
357
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358set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
359show guile print-stack
360 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
361
362set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
363show auto-load guile-scripts
364 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
365
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366maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
367maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
368 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
369 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
370 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
371 usage of this option.
372
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373set auto-connect-native-target
374
375 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
376 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
377 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
378
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379set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
380show record btrace replay-memory-access
381 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
382
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383maint set target-async (on|off)
384maint show target-async
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385 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
386 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
329ea579 387 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
5784b3ca 388 occurring only in synchronous mode.
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389
390set mi-async (on|off)
391show mi-async
392 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
393 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
394
395* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
396 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
397
398* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
399 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
400 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
401 "set target-async on" command.
402
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403* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
404
405 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
406 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
407 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
408 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
409 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
410
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411* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
412 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
413 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
414
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415* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
416 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
417 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
418 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
419 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
420 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
421 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
422
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423* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
424 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
425
066ce621 426* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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427 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
428 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 429
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430* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
431 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
432 memory or registers.
433
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434* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
435
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436* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
437 remote. It now works with all targets.
438
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439* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
440 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
441 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
442 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
443 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
444 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
445 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
446 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
447 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
448 target-stack".
449
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450* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
451 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
452 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
453
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454* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
455
456* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
457 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
458 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
459
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460* New remote packets
461
462qXfer:btrace:read's annex
463 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
464 branch trace incrementally.
465
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466* Python Scripting
467
468 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
469 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
470 available.
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471 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
472 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
473 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
474 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
475 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 476
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477* New targets
478PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
479
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480* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
481 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
482 its alias "share", instead.
483
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484* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
485 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
486 instead.
487
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488* MI changes
489
490 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
491 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
492 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
493 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
494 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
495 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
496 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
497 commands and CLI execution commands.
498
b7bba001 499*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 500
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501* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
502 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
503 recording has been added.
504
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505* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
506
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507* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
508 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
509
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510* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
511 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
512 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
513 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
514 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
515 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
516 "void".
517
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518* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
519
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520* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
521
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522* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
523 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
524 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
525 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
526
527 (gdb) p $rax
528 $1 = <not saved>
529
530 (gdb) info registers rax
531 rax <not saved>
532
533 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
534 "*value not available*".
535
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536* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
537 to binaries.
538
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539* Python scripting
540
541 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 542 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 543 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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544 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
545 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 546 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 547
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548* New targets
549
550Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
551Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 552Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 553
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554* Removed native configurations
555
556Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
557been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
558
559arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
560i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
561i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
562i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
563m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
564sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
565vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
566
bd712aed 567* New commands:
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568catch rethrow
569 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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570maint check-psymtabs
571 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
572maint check-symtabs
573 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
574maint expand-symtabs
575 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 576
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577show configuration
578 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
579
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580maint set|show per-command
581maint set|show per-command space
582maint set|show per-command time
583maint set|show per-command symtab
584 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
585
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586remove-symbol-file FILENAME
587remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
588 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
589 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
590 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
591
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592info exceptions
593info exceptions REGEXP
594 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
595 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
596 are listed.
597
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598* New options
599
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DE
600set debug symfile off|on
601show debug symfile
602 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
603 symbol tables within those files
604
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DE
605set print raw frame-arguments
606show print raw frame-arguments
607 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
608 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
609
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PA
610set remote trace-status-packet
611show remote trace-status-packet
612 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
613
a1217d97
SL
614set debug nios2
615show debug nios2
616 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
617
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PA
618set range-stepping
619show range-stepping
620 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
621
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PA
622set startup-with-shell
623show startup-with-shell
624 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
625 directly.
626
29453a14
YQ
627set code-cache
628show code-cache
629 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
630 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
631
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PA
632* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
633 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
634 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
635 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
636 "set height 0".
637
db0fec5c
DE
638* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
639 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
640 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
641
dccca75d
EZ
642* New command-line options
643--configuration
644 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
645
d0353e76
YQ
646* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
647 buffer in Common Trace Format.
648
b292c783
JK
649* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
650 GDB command gcore.
651
6e72ca20
TT
652* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
653
b340913d
TT
654* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
655 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
656
657* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
658 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
659
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SDJ
660* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
661 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
662 due to an uncaught signal.
663
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YQ
664* MI changes
665
403cb6b1 666 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
4e35e808
JB
667 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
668 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 669
6b7cbff1
JB
670 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
671 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
672
2ea126fa
JB
673 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
674 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
675 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
676 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
677 "undefined-command-error-code".
678
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679 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
680 Trace Format now.
681
c5867ab6
HZ
682 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
683
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YQ
684 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
685 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
686 are displayed.
687
dc673c81
YQ
688 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
689 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
690
6211c335
YQ
691 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
692 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
693 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
694
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JB
695 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
696 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
697 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
72bfa06c
JB
698 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
699 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
700 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 701
40555925
JB
702 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
703 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
704
58d06528
JB
705 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
706 the new "info exceptions" command.
707
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JB
708* New system-wide configuration scripts
709 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
710 configuration scripts for the following systems:
711 ** ElinOS
712 ** Wind River Linux
713
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PA
714* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
715 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
716 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
717 below.
718
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YQ
719* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
720 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
721
4ac33720
UW
722* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
723 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
724 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
725
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PA
726* New remote packets
727
728vCont;r
729
730 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
731 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
732 involvemement at each single-step.
733
7f91dbec
GB
734qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
735 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
736 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
737 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
738 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
739 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
740 speedup.
741
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PA
742* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
743
744 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
745 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
746
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YQ
747 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
748 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
749 trace state variables.
750
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YQ
751 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
752 target.
753
6fbe845e
AB
754* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
755 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
756
9058cc3a
TG
757* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
758
0d12017b
JB
759* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
760 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
761 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
762 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
763
2d450646 764*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 765
59ea5688
MM
766* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
767 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
768 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
769 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
770
771set|show record full insn-number-max
772set|show record full stop-at-limit
773set|show record full memory-query
774
775* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
776 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
777 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
778 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
779 This new recording method can be enabled using:
780
781record btrace
782
783 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
784 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
785
786* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
787 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
788 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
789
790record instruction-history prints the execution history at
791 instruction granularity
792
793record function-call-history prints the execution history at
794 function granularity
795
543bf33d
AT
796* New native configurations
797
51d66578 798ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 799FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 800x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 801Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 802
249729c4
JB
803* New targets
804
51d66578
MS
805ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
806ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 807Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 808x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 809Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 810
e64e0392
DE
811* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
812 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
813 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
814 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
815 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
816 --data-directory command-line option.
817
07540c15
DE
818* New command line options:
819
820-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
821 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
822
e93a8774
TT
823* Removed command line options
824
825-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
826 Emacs.
827
53342f27
TT
828* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
829 type formatting.
830
451b7c33
TT
831* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
832
a72c3253
DE
833* Python scripting
834
835 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
836
d7de8e3c
TT
837 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
838
18a9fc12
TT
839 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
840
9a27f2c6
PK
841 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
842
bea883fd
SCR
843 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
844 of architecture in the Python API.
845
846 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
847 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
848
a72c3253
DE
849* New Python-based convenience functions:
850
851 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
852 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
853 ** $_strlen(str)
854 ** $_regex(str, regex)
855
f3c8a52a
JK
856* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
857 given an argument.
858
1605ef26
TT
859* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
860 default for GCC since November 2000.
861
504b36fd
YQ
862* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
863
f2a8bc8a
YQ
864* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
865 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
866
23a80689
JB
867* New configure options
868
869--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
870 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
871 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
872 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
873 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
874 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
875--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
876 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
877 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 878
d6b28940
TT
879* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
880
ab04a2af
TT
881catch signal
882 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
883 conditions to be attached.
884
d6b28940
TT
885maint info bfds
886 List the BFDs known to GDB.
887
8315665e
YPK
888python-interactive [command]
889pi [command]
890 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
891 and print the result of expressions.
892
893py [command]
894 "py" is a new alias for "python".
895
18a9fc12
TT
896enable type-printer [name]...
897disable type-printer [name]...
898 Enable or disable type printers.
899
aa9259cc
TS
900* Removed commands
901
902 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
903 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
904 instead.
905
53342f27
TT
906* New options
907
908set print type methods (on|off)
909show print type methods
910 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
911 The default is to show them.
912
913set print type typedefs (on|off)
914show print type typedefs
915 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
916 The default is to show them.
917
1b56eb55
JK
918set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
919show filename-display
920 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
921 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
922
e9f1758d
PA
923set trace-buffer-size
924show trace-buffer-size
925 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
926
a46c1e42
PA
927set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
928show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
929 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
930
be9a8770
PA
931set debug aarch64
932show debug aarch64
933 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
934 The default is off.
935
936set debug coff-pe-read
937show debug coff-pe-read
938 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
939 exported symbols.
940
941set debug mach-o
942show debug mach-o
943 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
944 processing.
945
946set debug notification
947show debug notification
948 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
949
5b9afe8a
YQ
950* MI changes
951
952 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
953 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
954 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
955 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
956 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
957 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
958 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
959 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
960 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
961 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
962 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 963 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 964 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
965 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
966 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
967 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
968 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
969 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
970 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
971 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
972 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
973 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
974 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
975 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
976 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 977
608e2dbb
TT
978* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
979 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
980 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
981 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
982
f6f899bf
HAQ
983* New remote packets
984
985QTBuffer:size
986 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
987 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
988
10782d74
MM
989Qbtrace:bts
990 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
991 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
992 qSupported query.
993
994Qbtrace:off
995 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
996 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
997
998qXfer:btrace:read
999 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1000 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1001
80c8d323 1002*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 1003
1b3371b1
L
1004* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1005 for more x32 ABI info.
1006
d0e64392
MR
1007* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1008
4cc0665f
MR
1009* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1010
85d4a676
SS
1011* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1012 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1013 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1014 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1015 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1016 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1017 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1018 "info os msg" lists message queues
1019 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1020
55aa24fb
SDJ
1021* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1022 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1023 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1024 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1025 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1026 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1027
72508ac0
PO
1028* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1029 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1030 record/replay support.
1031
16899756
DE
1032* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1033
4795f398
DE
1034* Python scripting
1035
7d74f244
DE
1036 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1037 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1038
4795f398
DE
1039 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1040
50897289
TT
1041 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1042 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1043
64e7d9dd
TT
1044 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1045
1046 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1047 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1048
f0823d2c
TT
1049 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1050 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1051 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1052 symbol's value.
1053
7b282c5a
SCR
1054 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1055 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1056
a20ee7a4
SCR
1057 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1058 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1059 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1060
7efc75aa
SCR
1061 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1062 object associated with a PC value.
1063
ee0bf529
SCR
1064 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1065 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1066
a766d390
DE
1067* Go language support.
1068 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1069 language.
1070
e0f9f062
DE
1071* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1072 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1073
217bff3e
JK
1074* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1075 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1076
cafec441
TT
1077* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1078 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1079 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1080 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1081 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1082 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1083
4aac40c8
TT
1084* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1085 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1086 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1087 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1088
d99bd577
UW
1089* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1090 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1091
53fe1783
GB
1092* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1093 since December 2007.
1094
e41eec66
JB
1095* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1096 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1097 command does. For instance:
1098
1099 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1100
1101 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1102 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1103 created, using the "condition" command.
1104
5808517f
YQ
1105* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1106 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1107
481860b3
GB
1108* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1109
1110* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1111 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1112 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
1113 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1114 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1115 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1116 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1117 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 1118
156942c7
DE
1119 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1120 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1121 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1122 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1123 the .gdb_index section.
1124
927fbba6
JB
1125* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1126
20388dd6
YQ
1127* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1128 target.
1129
f3e0e960
SS
1130* MI changes
1131
1132 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1133
37ce89eb
SS
1134 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1135
edcc5120
TT
1136* New commands
1137
e615022a
DE
1138 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1139 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1140 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1141
edcc5120
TT
1142 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1143 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1144
816338b5
SS
1145 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1146 several hits.
1147
57651221 1148 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
1149 C++ and Java objects.
1150
06fc020f 1151 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 1152 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
1153 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1154 configured with '--with-python'.
1155
bf88dd68
JK
1156 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1157 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1158 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1159 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1160 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1161 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1162 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1163
1164 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1165 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1166 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1167 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1168
e7e0cddf
SS
1169 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1170 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1171 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1172 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1173
9cb709b6
TT
1174 ** "set print symbol"
1175 "show print symbol"
1176 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1177 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1178 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1179
2d4c29c5
TS
1180* Deprecated commands
1181
1182 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1183 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1184
a58b110a
KB
1185* New targets
1186
1187Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 1188HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 1189
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LM
1190* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1191 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1192 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1193 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1194 evaluates to true.
1195
1196* New options
1197
4cc0665f
MR
1198set mips compression
1199show mips compression
1200 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1201 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1202 mips16
1203 micromips
1204 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1205
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LM
1206set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1207show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 1208 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
1209 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1210 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
1211 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1212 target.
1213
bf88dd68
JK
1214set auto-load off
1215 Disable auto-loading globally.
1216
1217show auto-load
1218 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1219
1220set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1221show auto-load gdb-scripts
1222 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1223
1224set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1225show auto-load python-scripts
1226 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1227
1228set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1229show auto-load local-gdbinit
1230 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1231
1232set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1233show auto-load libthread-db
1234 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1235
7349ff92 1236set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 1237show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
1238 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1239 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1240 of the directories listed by this option.
1241 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1242
bccbefd2
JK
1243set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1244show auto-load safe-path
1245 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1246 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1247
4dc84fd1
JK
1248set debug auto-load on|off
1249show debug auto-load
1250 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1251
d3ce09f5 1252set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 1253show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
1254 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1255 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1256 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1257 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
1258
1259set dprintf-function <expr>
1260show dprintf-function
1261set dprintf-channel <expr>
1262show dprintf-channel
1263 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1264 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1265
d3ce09f5
SS
1266set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1267show disconnected-dprintf
1268 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1269 after GDB disconnects.
1270
6dea1fbd
JK
1271* New configure options
1272
7349ff92
JK
1273--with-auto-load-dir
1274 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
1275 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1276 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1277 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1278 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 1279
6dea1fbd
JK
1280--with-auto-load-safe-path
1281 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1282 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1283
1284--without-auto-load-safe-path
1285 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1286 security feature.
1287
72895ff6
LM
1288* New remote packets
1289
74c48cbb
PA
1290z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1291
72895ff6
LM
1292 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1293 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1294 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1295 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1296
9b224c5e
PA
1297QProgramSignals:
1298
1299 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1300 program without GDB involvement.
1301
8320cc4f
JK
1302* New command line options
1303
1304--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1305 before loading inferior.
1306--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1307 execute it before loading inferior.
1308
8837a20f
JB
1309*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1310
f8eba3c6
TT
1311* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1312 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1313 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1314 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1315 inferior changes.
1316
1bfeeb0f
JL
1317* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1318 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1319
480a3f21
PW
1320* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1321 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1322 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1323 target hardware watchpoint.
1324
1325 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1326 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1327 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1328 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1329
3a7bf607
PM
1330* Python scripting
1331
32d1c362 1332 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1333 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1334 existing one.
1335
3a7bf607 1336 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1337 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1338 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1339 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1340 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1341 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1342
baacfb07 1343 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1344 Python API.
713389e0 1345
fa3a4f15
PM
1346 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1347 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1348 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1349 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1350 corresponding value.
1351
5e239b84
PM
1352 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1353 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1354 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1355 on GDB start-up.
1356
9df2fbc4
PM
1357 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1358 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1359 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1360 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1361
457e09f0
DE
1362 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1363
6839b47f
KP
1364 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1365 "gdb.breakpoints".
1366
cc72b2a2
KP
1367 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1368 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1369 available in the CLI.
1370
84ad80e6
PK
1371 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1372 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1373 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1374 "some_type.items()".
1375
20c168b5
KP
1376 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1377 new object file.
1378
03c3051a
PK
1379 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1380 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1381 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1382 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1383 any anonymous fields.
1384
7376e450
TT
1385* MI changes
1386
1387 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1388 "solib-event".
1389
1390 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1391 "=breakpoint-modified".
1392
1393 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1394
98a5dd13
DE
1395* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1396 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1397 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1398 lives.
1399
1400 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1401 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1402 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1403 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1404 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1405
1406 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1407 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1408
478aac75
DE
1409* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1410 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1411 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1412 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1413 use this option to specify where to find it.
1414
9c06b0b4
TJB
1415* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1416 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1417 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1418 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1419 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1420 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1421 section in the user manual for more details.
1422
03f2bd59
JK
1423* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1424 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1425 become available after that.
1426
71eba9c2 1427* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1428
2bda9cc5
JK
1429* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1430 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1431 gcc version 4.7.
1432
ed59ded5
DE
1433* New commands
1434
1435!SHELL COMMAND
1436 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1437 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1438
9c06b0b4
TJB
1439* Changed commands
1440
1441watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1442 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1443 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1444
dbaefcf7
DE
1445info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1446 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1447 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1448
71eba9c2 1449info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1450 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1451 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1452 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1453 name starts with a hyphen.
1454
3065dfb6
SS
1455collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1456 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1457 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1458 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1459 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1460 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1461 number of bytes that will be collected.
1462
f196051f
SS
1463tstart [NOTES]
1464 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1465 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1466 setting the variable trace-notes.
1467
1468tstop [NOTES]
1469 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1470 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1471 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1472 trace-stop-notes.
1473
d248b706
KY
1474* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1475 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1476 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1477 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1478 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1479 is running.
1480
405f8e94
SS
1481* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1482 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1483 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1484
2bda9cc5
JK
1485* New options
1486
45cfd468
DE
1487set debug dwarf2-read
1488show debug dwarf2-read
1489 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1490 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1491
1492set debug symtab-create
1493show debug symtab-create
1494 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1495 creation. The default is off.
1496
baacfb07
PM
1497set extended-prompt
1498show extended-prompt
1499 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1500 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1501 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1502 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1503 prompt is displayed.
1504
2bda9cc5
JK
1505set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1506show print entry-values
1507 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1508 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1509 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1510
1511set debug entry-values
1512show debug entry-values
1513 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1514 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1515
c011a4f4
DE
1516set basenames-may-differ
1517show basenames-may-differ
1518 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1519 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1520 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1521 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1522 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1523 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1524 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1525 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1526
f196051f
SS
1527set trace-user
1528show trace-user
1529set trace-notes
1530show trace-notes
1531 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1532 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1533 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1534 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1535
1536set trace-stop-notes
1537show trace-stop-notes
1538 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1539 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1540 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1541 started by someone else.
1542
d248b706
KY
1543* New remote packets
1544
1545QTEnable
1546
1547 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1548
1549QTDisable
1550
1551 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1552
f196051f
SS
1553QTNotes
1554
1555 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1556
1557qTP
1558
1559 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1560
405f8e94
SS
1561qTMinFTPILen
1562
1563 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1564 be placed.
1565
1a532630
PP
1566* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1567 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1568
11315641
YQ
1569* New targets
1570
1571Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1572
87326c78
DD
1573* New Simulators
1574
1575Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1576
e8d56f18
JB
1577*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1578
1579* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1580
d6e00af6 1581*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1582
60f98dde
MS
1583* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1584 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1585 matches the given regular expression.
1586
eee5b35e
DD
1587* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1588
b716877b
AB
1589* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1590 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1591
aae1c79a
DE
1592* New command line options
1593
1594-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1595 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1596
a86caf66
DE
1597* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1598 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1599
99e7ae30
DE
1600* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1601 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1602 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1603
4694da01
TT
1604* GDB now understands thread names.
1605
1606 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1607 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1608
1609 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1610 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1611
f4b8a18d
KW
1612* OpenCL C
1613 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1614 has been integrated into GDB.
1615
585d1eb8
PM
1616* Python scripting
1617
da5d4055
PM
1618 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1619 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1620 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1621
9a6f1302
PM
1622 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1623 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1624 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1625 and allows for more dynamic content.
1626
29703da4
PM
1627 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1628 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1629 have an is_valid method.
1630
350c6c65
PM
1631 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1632 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1633 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1634
6e6fbe60
DE
1635 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1636
585d1eb8
PM
1637 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1638 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1639 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1640 that function like so:
1641
1642 result = some_value (10,20)
1643
0e3509db
DE
1644 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1645 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1646 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1647
7b51bc51
DE
1648 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1649 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1650 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1651 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1652 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1653
1654 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1655 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1656
99e7ae30
DE
1657 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1658
d8e22779
TT
1659 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1660 selected thread.
1661
4694da01
TT
1662 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1663 holds the thread's name.
1664
505500db
SW
1665 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1666 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1667 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1668 The following events are currently supported:
1669 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1670 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1671 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1672
def98928
TT
1673* C++ Improvements:
1674
1675 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1676 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1677
1678 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1679
1680 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1681 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1682 was added to GCC 4.5.
1683
66cb8159
TT
1684 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1685 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1686 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1687 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1688 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1689 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1690
4aac0db7
UW
1691* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1692 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1693 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1694 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1695 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1696
283e6a52
TT
1697* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1698 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1699 execution to a label.
1700
1701* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1702 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1703 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1704 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1705
b56df873 1706* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1707 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1708 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1709 of scope.
1710
ae53ffa4
PA
1711* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1712
1713 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1714 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1715 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1716 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1717 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1718 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1719
1720 (gdb) info threads
1721 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1722
1723 While now you see this:
1724
1725 (gdb) info threads
1726 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1727
1728 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1729 dumps.
1730
1731 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1732 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1733 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1734 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1735
f1310107
TJB
1736* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1737 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1738 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1739 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1740 section in the user manual for more details.
1741
248c9dbc
JB
1742* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1743
1aee7009
JB
1744 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1745 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1746
eb826dc6
MF
1747 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1748
44603653
JB
1749* New native configurations
1750
1751ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1752
91021223
MF
1753* New targets:
1754
1755Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1756
6e1bb179
JB
1757* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1758 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1759 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1760 in the GDB user manual.
1761
50c97f38
TT
1762* Guile support was removed.
1763
448a92bf
MF
1764* New features in the GNU simulator
1765
1766 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1767
66ee2731
MF
1768 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1769
76b8507d 1770*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1771
ba25b921
PA
1772* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1773
1774 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1775 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1776 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1777 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1778 was always disabled for such configurations.
1779
4656f5c6
SW
1780* C++ Improvements:
1781
1782 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1783
1784 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1785 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1786 For example:
1787 namespace A
1788 {
1789 class B { };
1790 void foo (B) { }
1791 }
1792 ...
1793 A::B b
1794 foo(b)
1795 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1796 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1797 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1798
1799 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1800
1801 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1802 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1803 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1804 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1805 entry.
1806 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1807 mentioned flavors of operators.
1808
254e6b9e
DE
1809 ** static const class members
1810
1811 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1812 class definition has been fixed.
1813
711e434b
PM
1814* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1815
1816 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1817 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1818 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1819 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1820 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1821 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1822
0fb4aa4b
PA
1823* Static tracepoints
1824
1825 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1826 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1827 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1828 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1829 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1830 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1831 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1832 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1833 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1834 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1835 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1836 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1837 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1838 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1839 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1840 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1841 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1842 the "New remote packets" section below.
1843
ca11e899
SS
1844* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1845
1846 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1847 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1848 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1849 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1850
1851* Observer mode
1852
1853 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1854 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1855 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1856 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1857 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1858 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1859 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1860
1861* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1862 current thread.
1863
711e434b
PM
1864* New remote packets
1865
1866qGetTIBAddr
1867
1868 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1869
dde08ee1
PA
1870qRelocInsn
1871
1872 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1873 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1874 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1875 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1876 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1877 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1878
0fb4aa4b
PA
1879qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1880
1881 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1882
1883qTSTMat
1884
1885 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1886 program.
1887
1888qXfer:statictrace:read
1889
1890 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1891 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1892 to gdb's qSupported query.
1893
ca11e899
SS
1894QAllow
1895
1896 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1897
1898QTDPsrc
1899
1900 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1901 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1902
3f7b2faa
DE
1903* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1904 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1905 a directory.
1906
d337e9f0
PA
1907* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1908
0fb4aa4b
PA
1909 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1910 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1911 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1912 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1913
1914 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1915 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1916 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1917 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1918 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1919 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1920 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1921
1922 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1923 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1924
c24d0242
PM
1925 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1926
c8d5aac9
L
1927* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1928 it understands register description.
1929
7c953934
TT
1930* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1931
8685c86f
L
1932* X86 general purpose registers
1933
1934 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1935 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1936 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1937 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1938 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1939
95a42b64 1940* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1941 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1942 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1943 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1944 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1945 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1946
8bd10a10
CM
1947* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1948 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1949 in the specified file.
1950
ab38a727
PA
1951* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1952 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1953 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1954 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1955 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1956 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1957 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1958 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1959 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1960 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1961
6149aea9
PA
1962* New commands
1963
f1421989
HZ
1964eval template, expressions...
1965 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1966 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1967
ab38a727
PA
1968set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1969show target-file-system-kind
1970 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1971 names.
1972
6149aea9
PA
1973save breakpoints <filename>
1974 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1975 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1976 definitions, use the `source' command.
1977
1978`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1979is now deprecated.
1980
0fb4aa4b
PA
1981info static-tracepoint-markers
1982 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1983
1984strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1985 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1986 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1987
ca11e899
SS
1988set observer on|off
1989show observer
1990 Enable and disable observer mode.
1991
1992set may-write-registers on|off
1993set may-write-memory on|off
1994set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1995set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1996set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1997set may-interrupt on|off
1998 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1999 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2000 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2001 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2002 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2003 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2004 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2005
2006set record memory-query on|off
2007show record memory-query
2008 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2009 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2010
53a71c06
CR
2011* Changed commands
2012
2013disassemble
2014 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2015
f3e9a817
PM
2016* Python scripting
2017
9279c692
JB
2018** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2019 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2020 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2021 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2022 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2023
adc36818 2024** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
2025 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2026 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2027 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 2028
fa33c3cd 2029** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
2030 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2031
2032** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
2033
2034** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 2035
967cf477
DE
2036** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2037
8a1ea21f
DE
2038** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2039 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2040 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2041
a7bdde9e
VP
2042* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2043there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2044tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2045regular breakpoints.
2046
05071a4d
PA
2047* New targets
2048
2049ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2050
6aecb9c2
JB
2051* D language support.
2052 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2053 language.
2054
431e49aa
TJB
2055* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2056 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2057 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2058 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2059 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2060
2061* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2062 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2063 conditions of the form:
2064
2065 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2066
2067 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2068 interface mentioned above.
2069
bfbf3774 2070*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 2071
4eef138c
TT
2072* C++ Improvements
2073
2074 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
2075
2076 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2077 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2078 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2079 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2080 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2081
4eef138c
TT
2082 ** Bug Fixes
2083
2084 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2085 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2086 qualified name.
2087
2088 ** Cast Operators
2089
2090 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2091 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2092
2d1c1221
ME
2093* New targets
2094
2095Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 2096Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
2097
2098* New Simulators
2099
2100Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 2101Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 2102
6c95b8df
PA
2103* Multi-program debugging.
2104
2105 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2106 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2107 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2108 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2109 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2110 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2111 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2112 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2113
d5551862
SS
2114* New tracing features
2115
2116 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2117
2118 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
2119
2120 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2121 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2122 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2123 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2124 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2125 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2126 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2127 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2128 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2129 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 2130
d5551862 2131 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
2132
2133 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2134 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2135 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2136 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2137 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2138 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2139 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2140 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2141 the regular trace command.
2142
d5551862
SS
2143 ** Disconnected tracing
2144
2145 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2146 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2147 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2148 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2149 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2150
00bf0b85
SS
2151 ** Trace files
2152
2153 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2154 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2155 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2156 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2157 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2158 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2159 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
2160
2161 ** Circular trace buffer
2162
2163 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2164 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2165 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2166 not be available for all target agents.
2167
21a0512e
PP
2168* Changed commands
2169
2170disassemble
2171 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2172 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2173
0fe7935b
DJ
2174info variables
2175 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2176 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2177
fb2e7cb4
JB
2178source
2179 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2180 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2181 support.
2182
2183 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2184 "set script-extension" (see below).
2185
6c95b8df
PA
2186* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2187
399cd161
MS
2188record save [<FILENAME>]
2189 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2190 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2191
2192record restore <FILENAME>
2193 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2194 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2195
6c95b8df
PA
2196add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2197 Add a new inferior.
2198
2199clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2200 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2201 inferior has loaded.
2202
2203remove-inferior ID
2204 Remove an inferior.
2205
2206maint info program-spaces
2207 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2208
9a7071a8
JB
2209set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2210show remote interrupt-sequence
2211 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2212 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2213 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2214 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2215 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2216
2217set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2218show remote interrupt-on-connect
2219 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2220 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2221 Linux kernel.
2222
2223set remotebreak [on | off]
2224show remotebreak
2225Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2226
f61e138d
SS
2227tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2228 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2229
2230info tvariables
2231 List trace state variables and their values.
2232
2233delete tvariable $NAME ...
2234 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2235
6da95a67
SS
2236teval EXPR, ...
2237 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2238 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2239
7a697b8d
SS
2240ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2241 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2242
b0f02ee9
JK
2243* New expression syntax
2244
2245 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2246 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2247
6c95b8df
PA
2248* New options
2249
2250set follow-exec-mode new|same
2251show follow-exec-mode
2252 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2253 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2254 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2255
236f1d4d
SS
2256set default-collect EXPR, ...
2257show default-collect
2258 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2259 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2260 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2261
d5551862
SS
2262set disconnected-tracing
2263show disconnected-tracing
2264 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2265 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2266 upon disconnection.
2267
4daf5ac0
SS
2268set circular-trace-buffer
2269show circular-trace-buffer
2270 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2271 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2272 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2273 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2274
fb2e7cb4
JB
2275set script-extension off|soft|strict
2276show script-extension
2277 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2278 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2279 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2280 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2281 evaluation failed.
2282 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2283
2b71fc8e
JB
2284set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2285show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2286 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2287 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2288 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2289 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2290 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2291 is on.
2292
de2e5182
TT
2293* Python API Improvements
2294
2295 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2296 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2297 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2298
2299 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2300 `is_base_class' attribute.
2301
2302 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2303
2304 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2305 evaluate an expression.
2306
f61e138d
SS
2307* New remote packets
2308
2309QTDV
2310 Define a trace state variable.
2311
2312qTV
2313 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2314
d5551862
SS
2315QTDisconnected
2316 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2317
4daf5ac0
SS
2318QTBuffer:circular
2319 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2320
d5551862
SS
2321qTfP, qTsP
2322 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2323
2d483d34
MS
2324* Bug fixes
2325
2326Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2327
6e0e5977
JB
2328Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2329much more reliable. In particular:
2330 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2331 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2332 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2333 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2334 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2335 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2336 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2337 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2338 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2339 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2340 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2341 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2342 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2343 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2344 non-threaded programs.
2345
93c26624
JK
2346PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2347This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2348libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2349executable program.
2350
abc7453d 2351*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2352
4efc6507
DE
2353* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2354dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2355them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2356for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2357"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2358
782b2b07
SS
2359* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2360breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2361or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2362the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2363for tracepoint actions.
2364
53a71c06
CR
2365* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2366raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2367modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2368
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2369* Process record and replay
2370
2371 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2372 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2373 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2374 execute commands.
2375
64644d9b
MS
2376* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2377step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2378set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2379reverse execution.
2380
b9412953
DD
2381* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2382feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
23832.6.28 or later.
2384
6c7a06a3
TT
2385* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2386target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2387char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2388literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2389U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2390`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2391system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2392the installation instructions for more information.
2393
f1838a98
UW
2394* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2395remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2396with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2397the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2398
55333a84
DE
2399* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2400and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2401
7f6a6314
PM
2402* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2403now complete on file names.
2404
65d12d83
TT
2405* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2406completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2407For instance, consider:
2408
2409 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2410 # struct example variable;
2411 (gdb) p variable.
2412
2413If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2414completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2415
edb3359d
DJ
2416* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2417the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2418
2fae03e8
TT
2419* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2420operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2421macros.
2422
47a3467a 2423* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2424the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2425implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2426
2427* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2428registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2429can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2430and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2431
08388c79
DE
2432* New remote packets
2433
2434qSearch:memory:
2435 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2436
a6f3e723
SL
2437QStartNoAckMode
2438 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2439 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2440 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2441
d7713ae0
EZ
2442vKill
2443 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2444 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2445
07e059b5
VP
2446qXfer:osdata:read
2447 Obtains additional operating system information
2448
47a3467a
PA
2449qXfer:siginfo:read
2450qXfer:siginfo:write
2451 Read or write additional signal information.
2452
060871df
PA
2453* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2454
2455 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2456 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2457 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2458
c055b101 2459* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2460DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2461
2462* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2463and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2464`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2465
31fffb02
CS
2466* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2467with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2468
88d8a8e0
JB
2469* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2470
7f99b190
JB
2471* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2472
ccd213ac
DJ
2473* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2474which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2475
1fddbabb 2476* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2477list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2478
a0ef4274
DJ
2479* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2480conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2481have also been fixed.
2482
bfb8797a 2483* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2484From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2485are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2486
71c25dea
TT
2487* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2488example, given:
2489
2490 template<typename T> class C { };
2491 C<char const *> c;
2492
2493GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2494
2495 ptype C<char const *>
2496 ptype C<char const*>
2497 ptype C<const char *>
2498 ptype C<const char*>
2499
ccd213ac
DJ
2500* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2501
2502 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2503 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2504
7ae0e2a2
UW
2505 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2506 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2507 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2508
a6f3e723
SL
2509 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2510 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2511
da8bd9a3
DJ
2512 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2513 gdbserver.
2514
d70e31dd
DE
2515 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2516 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2517
2518 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2519 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2520 as appropriate.
2521
d57a3c85
TJB
2522* Python scripting
2523
2524 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2525 available is determined at configure time.
2526
d8906c6f
TJB
2527 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2528
aadc346a
JB
2529* Ada tasking support
2530
2531 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2532 been introduced:
2533
2534 info tasks
2535 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2536 info task N
2537 Print detailed information about task number N.
2538 task
2539 Print the task number of the current task.
2540 task N
2541 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2542
adb483fe
DJ
2543* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2544add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2545
2277426b
PA
2546* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2547
2548 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2549 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2550 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2551 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2552 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2553 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2554 below.
2555
08d16641
PA
2556* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2557"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2558information.
2559
e35359c5
UW
2560* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2561to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2562architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2563See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2564more information.
2565
85e747d2
UW
2566* Multi-architecture debugging.
2567
2568 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2569 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2570 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2571 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2572 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2573
2574* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2575use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2576Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2577powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2578--enable-targets configure option.
2579
11ade57a
PA
2580* Non-stop mode debugging.
2581
2582 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2583 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2584 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2585 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2586 section in the user manual for more information.
2587
2588 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2589 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2590 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2591 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2592 extensions on linux targets.
2593
d7713ae0 2594* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2595
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2596catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2597 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2598 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2599 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2600 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2601 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2602 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2603 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2604 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2605
08388c79
DE
2606find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2607 val1 [, val2, ...]
2608 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2609
d57a3c85
TJB
2610maint set python print-stack
2611maint show python print-stack
2612 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2613
2614python [CODE]
2615 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2616
d7713ae0
EZ
2617macro define
2618macro list
2619macro undef
2620 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2621 interactively.
2622
2623info os processes
2624 Show operating system information about processes.
2625
2277426b
PA
2626info inferiors
2627 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2628
2629inferior NUM
2630 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2631
2632detach inferior NUM
2633 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2634
2635kill inferior NUM
2636 Kill inferior number NUM.
2637
d7713ae0
EZ
2638* New options
2639
3285f3fe
UW
2640set spu stop-on-load
2641show spu stop-on-load
2642 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2643
ff1a52c6
UW
2644set spu auto-flush-cache
2645show spu auto-flush-cache
2646 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2647 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2648
d7713ae0
EZ
2649set sh calling-convention
2650show sh calling-convention
2651 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2652
e0a3ce09 2653set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2654show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2655 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2656
2657set disassemble-next-line
2658show disassemble-next-line
2659 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2660 the debuggee stops.
2661
2662set remote noack-packet
2663show remote noack-packet
2664 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2665 under "New remote packets."
2666
2667set remote query-attached-packet
2668show remote query-attached-packet
2669 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2670
2671set remote read-siginfo-object
2672show remote read-siginfo-object
2673 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2674 packet.
2675
2676set remote write-siginfo-object
2677show remote write-siginfo-object
2678 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2679 packet.
2680
40ab02ce
MS
2681set remote reverse-continue
2682show remote reverse-continue
2683 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2684
2685set remote reverse-step
2686show remote reverse-step
2687 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2688
d7713ae0
EZ
2689set displaced-stepping
2690show displaced-stepping
2691 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2692 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2693 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2694
2695set debug displaced
2696show debug displaced
2697 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2698
2699maint set internal-error
2700maint show internal-error
2701 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2702
2703maint set internal-warning
2704maint show internal-warning
2705 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2706
ccd213ac
DJ
2707set exec-wrapper
2708show exec-wrapper
2709unset exec-wrapper
2710 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2711
aad4b048
JB
2712set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2713show multiple-symbols
2714 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2715 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2716 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2717
74960c60
VP
2718set breakpoint always-inserted
2719show breakpoint always-inserted
2720 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2721 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2722 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2723
0428b8f5
DJ
2724set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2725show arm fallback-mode
2726set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2727show arm force-mode
2728 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2729 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2730 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2731 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2732
10568435
JK
2733set disable-randomization
2734show disable-randomization
2735 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2736 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2737 multiple debugging sessions.
2738
d7713ae0
EZ
2739set non-stop
2740show non-stop
2741 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2742 a breakpoint.
2743
b3eb342c 2744set target-async
d7713ae0 2745show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2746 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2747 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2748 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2749 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2750
6c7a06a3
TT
2751set target-wide-charset
2752show target-wide-charset
2753 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2754 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2755
84603566
SL
2756set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2757show tcp auto-retry
2758set tcp connect-timeout
2759show tcp connect-timeout
2760 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2761 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2762 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2763
17a37d48
PP
2764set libthread-db-search-path
2765show libthread-db-search-path
2766 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2767 libthread_db.
2768
d4db2f36
PA
2769set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2770show schedule-multiple
2771 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2772 the current process.
2773
4e5d721f
DE
2774set stack-cache
2775show stack-cache
2776 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2777 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2778 affecting correctness.
2779
910c5da8
JB
2780set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2781show interactive-mode
2782 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2783 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2784 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2785 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2786 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2787
2277426b
PA
2788* Removed commands
2789
2790info forks
2791 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2792 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2793 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2794 command.
2795
2796fork NUM
2797 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2798 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2799 alias for the `fork' command.
2800
2801process PID
2802 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2803 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2804 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2805
2806delete fork NUM
2807 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2808 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2809 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2810 fork' command.
2811
2812detach fork NUM
2813 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2814 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2815 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2816 fork' command.
2817
a80b95ba
TG
2818* New native configurations
2819
2820x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2821
b8bfd3ed
JB
2822x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2823
75a2d5e7
TT
2824* New targets
2825
c28c63d8 2826Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2827x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2828x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2829S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2830
6de3146c
PA
2831* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2832 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2833
d5cbbe6e
JB
2834* Removed commands
2835
2836catch load
2837catch unload
2838 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2839
75feb17d 2840*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2841
af5ca30d
NH
2842* New native configurations
2843
2844NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2845Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2846
2847* New targets
2848
2849NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2850Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2851
7a404eba
PA
2852* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2853
2854 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2855 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2856 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2857 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2858
430ebac9
PA
2859* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2860(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2861
fe6fbf8b 2862* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2863is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2864
2865* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2866including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2867and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2868
10665d76
JB
2869* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2870accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2871more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2872
7cc46491
DJ
2873* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2874
d71340b8
DJ
2875* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2876registers on PowerPC targets.
2877
523c4513
DJ
2878* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2879targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2880
a6b151f1
DJ
2881* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2882commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2883
2d717e4f
DJ
2884* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2885extended-remote mode.
2886
24a836bd 2887* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2888The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2889error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2890The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2891
d0c678e6
UW
2892* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2893building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2894target architectures.
2895
d64a946d
TJB
2896* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2897Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2898now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2899stored in two consecutive float registers.
2900
ee163bf5
VP
2901* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2902breakpoints now.
2903
b93b6ca7 2904* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2905Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2906include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2907 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2908 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2909 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2910 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2911 of an assignment
2912 - Improved command completion in Ada
2913 - Several bug fixes
2914
d001be7a
DJ
2915* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2916process.
2917
a6b151f1
DJ
2918* New commands
2919
6d53d0af
JB
2920set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2921show print frame-arguments
2922 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2923 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2924
a6b151f1
DJ
2925remote put
2926remote get
2927remote delete
2928 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2929
2930* New MI commands
2931
2932-target-file-put
2933-target-file-get
2934-target-file-delete
2935 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2936
2937* New remote packets
2938
2939vFile:open:
2940vFile:close:
2941vFile:pread:
2942vFile:pwrite:
2943vFile:unlink:
2944 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2945
2d717e4f
DJ
2946vAttach
2947 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2948 mode.
2949
2950vRun
2951 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2952
8d5f9c6f 2953*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2954
19d378fc
MS
2955* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2956bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2957Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2958
3a40aaa0
UW
2959* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2960symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2961-Bsymbolic linker option.
2962
a6ec25f2
BW
2963* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2964recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2965is not supported.
2966
6dd09645
JB
2967* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2968frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2969
c9bb8148
DJ
2970* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
297132-bit or 64-bit register values.
2972
0d5de010
DJ
2973* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2974
23181151
DJ
2975* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2976target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2977a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2978
ea37ba09
DJ
2979* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2980automatically displayed as character or string data.
2981
2982* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2983arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2984as strings.
e1f48ead 2985
123dc839
DJ
2986* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2987for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2988only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2989
05a4558a
DJ
2990* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2991iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2992
7c963485
PA
2993* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2994ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2995has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2996
b18be20d
DJ
2997* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2998
0ca420ce
UW
2999* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3000
31d99776
DJ
3001* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3002layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3003segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3004
a4642986
MR
3005* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3006immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3007
cfa9d6d9
DJ
3008* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3009"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3010packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3011where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3012Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
3013
3014* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3015(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
3016
3017* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3018according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 3019
c9bb8148
DJ
3020* New commands
3021
23776285
MR
3022set remoteflow
3023show remoteflow
3024 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3025 when debugging using remote targets.
3026
c9bb8148
DJ
3027set mem inaccessible-by-default
3028show mem inaccessible-by-default
3029 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3030 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3031 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3032 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3033 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3034
3035set breakpoint auto-hw
3036show breakpoint auto-hw
3037 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3038 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3039 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3040 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3041 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3042 including "next" and "finish".
3043
0e420bd8
JB
3044catch exception
3045catch exception unhandled
3046 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3047
3048catch assert
3049 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3050
f822c95b
DJ
3051set sysroot
3052show sysroot
3053 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3054 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3055 an alias to "set sysroot".
3056
83cc5c53
UW
3057info spu
3058 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3059 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3060 architecture.
3061
bd372731
MK
3062* New native configurations
3063
3064OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3065
23181151
DJ
3066set tdesc filename
3067unset tdesc filename
3068show tdesc filename
3069 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3070 not query the target for its built-in description.
3071
c9bb8148
DJ
3072* New targets
3073
54fe9172 3074OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 3075MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 3076Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 3077
6dd09645
JB
3078* New remote packets
3079
3080QPassSignals:
3081 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3082 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3083
23181151
DJ
3084qXfer:features:read:
3085 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3086 features.
6dd09645 3087
83cc5c53
UW
3088qXfer:spu:read:
3089qXfer:spu:write:
3090 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3091 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3092
cfa9d6d9
DJ
3093qXfer:libraries:read:
3094 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3095 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3096 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3097 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3098
483367ee
DJ
3099* Removed targets
3100
3101Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3102
d08950c4
UW
3103alpha*-*-osf1*
3104alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 3105d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
3106hppa*-*-hiux*
3107i[34567]86-ncr-*
3108i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3109i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3110i[34567]86-*-netware*
3111i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3112i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3113i[34567]86-*-sco*
3114i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3115i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3116i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3117i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3118i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3119i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3120i[34567]86-*-isc*
3121m68*-cisco*-*
3122m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 3123mips*-*-pe
483367ee 3124rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 3125sh*-*-pe
483367ee 3126
7ce59000
DJ
3127* Other removed features
3128
3129target abug
3130target cpu32bug
3131target est
3132target rom68k
3133
3134 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3135
ea35711c
DJ
3136target hms
3137target e7000
3138target sh3
3139target sh3e
3140
3141 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3142 H8/300.
3143
3144target ocd
3145
3146 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3147 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3148 interfaces.
3149
7ce59000
DJ
3150DWARF 1 support
3151
3152 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3153 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3154
54d61198
DJ
3155Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3156
3157 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3158 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3159 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3160 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3161
ea35711c
DJ
3162MIPS ".pdr" sections
3163
3164 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3165 in debugging information.
3166
3167Scheme support
3168
3169 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3170 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3171
1a69e1e4
DJ
3172set mips stack-arg-size
3173set mips saved-gpreg-size
3174
3175 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3176
6dd09645 3177*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 3178
ca3bf3bd
DJ
3179* New targets
3180
3181Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 3182Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 3183
6aec2e11
DJ
3184* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3185(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3186running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3187
3188* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3189Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3190supported.
3191
17218d91
DJ
3192* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3193broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3194
9ebce043
DJ
3195* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3196stub provides the required support.
3197
7d3d3ece
DJ
3198* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3199longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3200
4f8253f3
JB
3201* New commands
3202
3203set substitute-path
3204unset substitute-path
3205show substitute-path
3206 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3207 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3208 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3209 between compilation and debugging.
3210
9fa66fd7
AS
3211set trace-commands
3212show trace-commands
3213 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3214 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3215 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3216
1f5befc1
DJ
3217* REMOVED features
3218
3219The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3220
2ec3381a
DJ
3221Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3222an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3223
3d00d119
DJ
3224The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3225
be2a5f71
DJ
3226* New remote packets
3227
3228qSupported:
3229 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3230 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3231 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3232 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3233 target.
3234
0876f84a
DJ
3235qXfer:auxv:read:
3236 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3237 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3238
9ebce043
DJ
3239qXfer:memory-map:read:
3240 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3241 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3242
3243vFlashErase:
3244vFlashWrite:
3245vFlashDone:
3246 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3247
0876f84a
DJ
3248* Removed remote packets
3249
3250qPart:auxv:read:
3251 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3252 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3253
e374b601 3254*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 3255
96309189
MS
3256* New targets
3257
3258Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3259
3260Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3261
53e5f3cf
AS
3262* New commands
3263
3264init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3265 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3266
ac264b3b
MS
3267The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3268
3269checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3270
3271restart <n> Return the program state to a
3272 previously saved state.
3273
3274info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3275
3276delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3277
3278set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3279 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3280
3281info forks List forks of the user program that
3282 are available to be debugged.
3283
3284fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3285 forks of the user program that are
3286 available to be debugged.
3287
3288delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3289 that are available to be debugged (and
3290 kill the forked process).
3291
3292detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3293 that are available to be debugged (and
3294 allow the process to continue).
3295
3950dc3f
NS
3296* New architecture
3297
3298Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3299
0ea3f30e
DJ
3300* Improved Windows host support
3301
3302GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3303native console support, and remote communications using either
3304network sockets or serial ports.
3305
f79daebb
GM
3306* Improved Modula-2 language support
3307
3308GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3309basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3310pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3311printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3312written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3313GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3314
acab6ab2
MM
3315* REMOVED features
3316
3317The ARM rdi-share module.
3318
f4267320
DJ
3319The Netware NLM debug server.
3320
53e5f3cf 3321*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3322
e0ecbda1
MK
3323* New native configurations
3324
02a677ac 3325OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3326OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3327
d64a6579
KB
3328* New targets
3329
3330Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3331
b33a6190
AS
3332* New command line options
3333
3334--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3335--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3336 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3337--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3338 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3339 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3340 with the --command (-x) option.
3341
11dced61
AC
3342* Deprecated commands removed
3343
3344The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3345removed:
3346
3347 Command Replacement
3348 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3349 othernames set arm disassembler
3350 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3351 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3352 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3353 regs info registers
3354
6fe85783
MK
3355* New BSD user-level threads support
3356
3357It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3358library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3359configurations are:
3360
3361FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3362FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3363OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3364
3365Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3366are not yet supported.
3367
5260ca71
MS
3368* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3369(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3370
e84ecc99
AC
3371* REMOVED configurations and files
3372
3373VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3374Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3375National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3376
31e35378
JB
3377* New "set print array-indexes" command
3378
3379After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3380when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3381behavior.
3382
e85e5c83
MK
3383* VAX floating point support
3384
3385GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3386
d91e9901
AS
3387* User-defined command support
3388
3389In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3390to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3391section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3392
f2cb65ca
MC
3393*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3394
f47b1503
AS
3395* New command line option
3396
3397GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3398debugging.
3399
f2cb65ca
MC
3400* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3401
3402GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3403information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3404by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3405proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3406to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3407
d08c0230
AC
3408* Internationalization
3409
3410When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3411internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3412continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3413
117ea3cf
PH
3414* Ada
3415
3416Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3417implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3418into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3419
d08c0230
AC
3420* New native configurations
3421
3422GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3423
3424* Remote 'p' packet
3425
3426GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3427packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3428
3429* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3430
3431GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3432The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3433features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3434i386 application).
3435
3436GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3437compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3438continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3439configurations:
3440
3441hppa-*-hpux
3442ia64-*-aix
3443mips-*-irix*
3444*-*-lynx
3445mips-*-linux-gnu
3446sds protocol
3447xdr protocol
3448powerpc bdm protocol
3449
3450Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3451made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3452
3453* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3454
3455Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3456been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3457configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3458permanently REMOVED.
3459
3460h8300-*-*
3461mcore-*-*
3462mn10300-*-*
3463ns32k-*-*
3464sh64-*-*
3465v850-*-*
3466
ebb7c577
AC
3467*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3468
3469* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3470
3471When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3472heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3473been fixed.
3474
3475* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3476
3477When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3478fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3479IRIX long double values).
3480
3481* VAX and "next"
3482
3483A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3484command. This problem has been fixed.
3485
860660cb 3486*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3487
0dea2468
AC
3488* Fix for ``many threads''
3489
3490On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3491rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3492error message:
3493
3494 ptrace: No such process.
3495 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3496
3497This problem has been fixed.
3498
2c07db7a
AC
3499* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3500
3501Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3502GDB to dump core).
3503
c23968a2
JB
3504* New ``start'' command.
3505
3506This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3507
71009278
MK
3508* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3509
3510Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3511live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3512platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3513
3514FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3515FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3516NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3517NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3518NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3519OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3520OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3521OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3522OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3523
3c0b7db2
AC
3524* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3525
3526Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3527These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3528of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3529call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3530signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3531
73cc75f3
AC
3532Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3533features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3534include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3535
7243600a
BF
3536* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3537
6f606e1c
MK
3538* New native configurations
3539
97dc871c 3540GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3541OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3542OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3543OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3544OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3545NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3546OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3547
a1b461bf
AC
3548* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3549
3550GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3551The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3552including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3553migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3554compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3555work, was also included.
3556
3557GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3558module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3559
3560h8300-*-*
3561mcore-*-*
3562mn10300-*-*
3563ns32k-*-*
3564sh64-*-*
3565v850-*-*
3566xstormy16-*-*
3567
3568Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3569made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3570
3c7012f5
AC
3571* REMOVED configurations and files
3572
3573Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3574Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3575Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3576Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3577Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3578AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3579Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3580decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3581riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3582sonymips mips-sony-*
3583sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3584
e5fe55f7
AC
3585*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3586
3587* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3588
3589The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3590GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3591command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3592program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3593with GDB".
3594
3595* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3596
3597Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3598libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3599cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3600GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3601shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3602the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3603are created.
3604
3605Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3606
3607* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3608
3609The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3610non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3611compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3612
3613* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3614
3615Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3616wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3617
3618* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3619
3620The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3621permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3622systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3623
3624* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3625
3626Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3627has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3628
3629* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3630
3631GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3632its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3633panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3634
3635* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3636
3637When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3638by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3639not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3640
faae5abe 3641*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3642
9175c9a3
MC
3643* Removed --with-mmalloc
3644
3645Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3646conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3647
3cc87ec0
MK
3648* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3649
3650The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3651the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3652and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3653you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3654
f0424ef6
MK
3655* Revised SPARC target
3656
3657The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3658FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3659support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3660from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3661(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3662
59659be2
ILT
3663* New C++ demangler
3664
3665GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3666names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3667with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3668programs.
3669
9e08b29b
DJ
3670* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3671
3672GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3673arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3674encountered these.
3675
8dfe8985
DC
3676* C++ nested types and namespaces
3677
3678GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3679improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3680is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3681Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3682namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3683"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3684frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3685if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3686GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3687
cced5e27
MK
3688* New native configurations
3689
3690NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3691OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3692OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3693OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3694OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3695
b4b4b794
KI
3696* New debugging protocols
3697
3698M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3699
7989c619
AC
3700* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3701
3702The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3703and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3704tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3705
5994185b
AC
3706* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3707
3708Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3709been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3710configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3711permanently REMOVED.
3712
3713Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3714Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3715Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3716Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3717Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3718AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3719Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3720decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3721riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3722sonymips mips-sony-*
3723sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3724
0ddabb4c
AC
3725* REMOVED configurations and files
3726
3727SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3728SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3729Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3730Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3731H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3732HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3733HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3734HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3735PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3736386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3737Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3738 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3739 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3740SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3741SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3742Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3743Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3744
c7f1390e
DJ
3745*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3746
1fe43d45
AC
3747* Objective-C
3748
3749Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3750integrated into GDB.
3751
e6beb428
AC
3752* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3753
3754DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3755information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3756By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3757backtraces.
3758
3759The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3760have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3761DWARF 2 CFI support.
3762
3763* Hosted file I/O.
3764
3765GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3766file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3767remote protocol documentation for details.
3768
3769* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3770
3771All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3772architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3773to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3774ppc32 on ppc64).
3775
3776* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3777
3778GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3779per-thread variables.
3780
3781* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3782
3783GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3784GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3785
3786* Separate debug info.
3787
3788GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3789automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3790of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3791system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3792and optional debug files.
3793
3794* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3795
3796DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3797describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3798debugger.
3799
3800GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3801for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3802
3803* Java
3804
3805A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3806Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3807considered "useable".
3808
85f8f974
DJ
3809* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3810
3811The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3812commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3813kernel.
3814
0fac0b41
DJ
3815* GDB supports logging output to a file
3816
3817There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3818used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3819
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3820* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3821
3822The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3823disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3824command.
3825
e286caf2 3826* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3827
3828The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3829registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3830
d28f9cdf
DJ
3831* Profiling support
3832
3833A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3834be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3835session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3836"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3837data, for more informative profiling results.
3838
da0f9dcd
AC
3839* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3840
3841The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3842option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3843"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3844
3845Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3846removed.
3847
fb9b6b35
JJ
3848Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3849Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3850Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3851 in a subsequent -var-update.
3852
954a4db8
MK
3853* New native configurations.
3854
3855FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3856
6760f9e6
JB
3857* Multi-arched targets.
3858
b4263afa 3859HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3860Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3861
1b831c93
AC
3862* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3863
3864Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3865been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3866configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3867permanently REMOVED.
3868
8b0e5691 3869Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3870Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3871H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3872HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3873HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3874HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3875PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3876Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3877 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3878 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3879Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3880Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3881
5835abe7
NC
3882* REMOVED configurations and files
3883
3884V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3885Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3886IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3887i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3888i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3889i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3890HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3891 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3892 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3893Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3894Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3895Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3896OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3897I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3898
a094c6fb
AC
3899* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3900
3901The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3902the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3903context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3904address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3905The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3906
299ffc64 3907*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3908
46248966
AC
3909* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3910
3911When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3912`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3913in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3914library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3915shared libs like mad''.
3916
b9d14705 3917* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3918
b9d14705
DJ
3919Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3920the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3921arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3922powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3923
e0e9281e
JB
3924* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3925
3926GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3927and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3928they expand.
3929
dd73b9bb
AC
3930The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3931invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3932
3933The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3934macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3935
e0e9281e
JB
3936Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3937information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3938your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3939information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3940
2250ee0c
CV
3941* Multi-arched targets.
3942
6e3ba3b8
JT
3943DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3944DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3945NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3946National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3947Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3948Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3949
cd9bfe15 3950* New targets.
e33ce519 3951
456f8b9d
DB
3952Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3953
e33ce519 3954
da8ca43d
JT
3955* New native configurations
3956
3957Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3958SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3959MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3960UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3961
cd9bfe15
AC
3962* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3963
3964Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3965been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3966configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3967permanently REMOVED.
3968
92eb23c5 3969Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3970OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3971IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3972Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3973Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3974Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3975i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3976i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3977i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3978HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3979 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3980 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3981I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3982
db034ac5
AC
3983* OBSOLETE languages
3984
3985CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3986
cd9bfe15
AC
3987* REMOVED configurations and files
3988
3989AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3990A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3991AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3992AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3993AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3994
3995testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3996
20f01a46
DH
3997* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3998
3999This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4000commands. The default is 1024.
4001
a5941fbf
MK
4002* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4003
4004Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4005
89743e04
MS
4006* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4007
4008These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4009to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4010from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 4011
9fb14e79
JB
4012* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4013
4014The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4015including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4016of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4017
2037aebb
AC
4018*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4019
4020* New targets.
4021
4022Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4023
4024* Bug fixes
4025
4026gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4027mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4028Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4029
4030gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4031dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4032Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4033
4034Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4035Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4036By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4037
4038i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4039avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4040By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4041
37057839 4042*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 4043
1a703748
MS
4044* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4045
4046This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4047really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4048In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4049target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4050This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4051(notably embedded) targets.
4052
cefd4ef5
MS
4053* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4054
55241689
AC
4055This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4056process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4057GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4058hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 4059
352ed7b4
MS
4060* New command line option
4061
4062GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4063
4064* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4065
4066There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4067command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4068a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4069be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4070open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4071issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4072a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4073it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4074GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4075is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4076
fe419ffc
RE
4077* Changes in ARM configurations.
4078
4079Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4080configuration is fully multi-arch.
4081
eb7cedd9
MK
4082* New native configurations
4083
fe419ffc 4084ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 4085x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 4086AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 4087Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 4088
c9f63e6b
CV
4089* New targets
4090
4091Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4092
9b4ff276
AC
4093* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4094
4095Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4096been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4097configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4098permanently REMOVED.
4099
4100AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4101A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4102AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4103AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4104AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4105
b4ceaee6 4106testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 4107
e2caac18
AC
4108* REMOVED configurations and files
4109
4110TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 4111WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
4112PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4113PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4114PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 4115Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
4116Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4117 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 4118SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 4119Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
4120Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4121ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 4122Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 4123
c2a727fa
TT
4124* Changes to command line processing
4125
4126The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4127for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4128
467d8519
TT
4129* Changes to key bindings
4130
4131There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4132
7072a954
AC
4133*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4134
4135Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4136
4137Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4138corrupted.
4139
4140Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4141
4142Numerous documentation fixes.
4143
4144Numerous testsuite fixes.
4145
34f47bc4 4146*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
4147
4148* New native configurations
4149
4150Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4151x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 4152MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
4153MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4154ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 4155s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 4156
bf64bfd6
AC
4157* New targets
4158
def90278 4159Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 4160CRIS cris-axis
55241689 4161UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 4162
17e78a56 4163* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
4164
4165x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 4166Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
4167Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4168 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
4169TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4170WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 4171Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
4172PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4173PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4174PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 4175SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
4176Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4177ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 4178Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 4179
17e78a56
AC
4180stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4181kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4182
7fcca85b
AC
4183Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4184been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4185configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4186permanently REMOVED.
4187
a196c81c 4188* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
4189
4190Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4191Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4192Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4193ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4194Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 4195ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 4196
6d6b80e5 4197* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 4198
6d6b80e5 4199GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
4200sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4201present.
4202
bf64bfd6
AC
4203* Other news:
4204
e23194cb
EZ
4205* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4206
4207* The MI enabled by default.
4208
4209The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4210revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4211engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4212using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4213which is now deprecated.
4214
4215* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4216
4217GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4218main features are supported:
4219
4220 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4221
4222 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4223 extension;
4224
4225 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4226
4227 - a Pascal expression parser.
4228
4229However, some important features are not yet supported.
4230
4231 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4232
4233 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4234
4235 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4236 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4237
4238 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4239
4240 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4241
4242* Changes in completion.
4243
4244Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4245to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4246users expect at the shell prompt.
4247
4248Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4249`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4250program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4251files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4252be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4253considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4254name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4255
4256`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4257
4258* New platform-independent commands:
4259
4260It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4261hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4262documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4263
4264* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4265
d7275149
MK
4266Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4267revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4268many threads as your system allows you to have.
4269
e23194cb
EZ
4270Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4271
d7275149
MK
4272Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4273multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
4274
4275* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
4276
4277Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4278
e23194cb
EZ
4279GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4280debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4281supported.)
4282
4283* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4284
4285Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4286breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4287implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4288put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4289and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4290registers.
4291
4292The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4293debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4294watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4295
4296* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4297
4298New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4299the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4300
4301New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4302display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4303IDT.
4304
4305New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4306from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4307New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4308a given linear address.
4309
4310GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4311program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4312which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4313
4314DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4315
6c56c069
EZ
4316It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4317
e23194cb
EZ
4318* Changes in documentation.
4319
4320All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4321Documentation License.
4322
4323Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4324manual.
4325
4326TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4327
4328Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4329manual.
4330
4331The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4332documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4333hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4334
5d6640b1
AC
4335* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4336
4337The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4338``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4339contents of this file.
4340
1a1d8446
AC
4341* gdba.el deleted
4342
4343GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4344
9debab2f 4345*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4346
c63ce875
EZ
4347* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4348
4349Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4350programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4351displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4352greater level of detail.
4353
4354* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4355
4356It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4357bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4358on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4359written.
4360
4361* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4362
4363The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4364necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4365machines ``out of the box''.
4366
4367The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4368possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4369signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4370would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4371interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4372
4373It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4374standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4375even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4376and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4377terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4378
4379The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4380enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4381also works.
4382
4383DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4384GDB.
4385
4386It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4387directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4388times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4389breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4390
ed9a39eb
JM
4391* New native configurations
4392
4393ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4394PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4395
7a292a7a
SS
4396* New targets
4397
96baa820 4398Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4399x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4400PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4401TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4402
085dd6e6
JM
4403* OBSOLETE configurations
4404
4405Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4406Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4407Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4408ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4409Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4410
9debab2f
AC
4411Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4412but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4413these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4414be permanently REMOVED.
4415
5330533d
SS
4416* Gould support removed
4417
4418Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4419
bc9e5bbf
AC
4420* New features for SVR4
4421
4422On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4423without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4424load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4425
4426* Many C++ enhancements
4427
4428C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4429in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4430
adf40b2e
JM
4431* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4432
4433A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4434sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4435with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4436``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4437
4438 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4439 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4440
43e526b9
JM
4441* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4442
4443A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4444expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4445instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4446
4447The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4448added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4449
96baa820
JM
4450* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4451
4452The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4453``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4454include ``set remote P-packet''.
4455
11cf8741
JM
4456* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4457
4458The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4459accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4460``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4461
7876dd43
DB
4462* ``apropos'' command added.
4463
4464The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4465documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4466try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4467
bc9e5bbf
AC
4468* New MI interface
4469
4470A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4471interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4472process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4473"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4474enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4475
4476 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4477
c906108c
SS
4478*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4479
4480* New native configurations
4481
4482HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4483HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4484M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4485
4486* New targets
4487
4488Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4489Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4490Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4491
4492* OBSOLETE configurations
4493
4494Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4495
4496Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4497but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4498these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4499be permanently REMOVED.
4500
4501* ANSI/ISO C
4502
4503As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4504buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4505containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4506use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4507available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4508configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4509information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4510already.
4511
4512* Readline 2.2
4513
4514GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4515
4516* set extension-language
4517
4518You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4519languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4520you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4521 set extension-language .c c++
4522The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4523and their associated languages.
4524
4525* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4526
4527When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4528you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4529PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4530
4531 set processor NAME
4532
4533sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4534following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4535
4536 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4537 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4538 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4539 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4540 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4541 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4542 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4543 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4544 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4545 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4546 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4547
4548At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4549special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4550registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4551only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4552
4553* HP-UX support
4554
4555Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4556more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4557library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4558support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4559for xdb and dbx commands.
4560
4561* Catchpoints
4562
4563HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4564generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4565to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4566
4567This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4568argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4569output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4570
4571* Debugging across forks
4572
4573On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4574in the inferior.
4575
4576* TUI
4577
4578HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4579it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4580configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4581
4582* GDB remote protocol additions
4583
4584A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4585Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4586fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4587allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4588
4589For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4590full 64-bit address. The command
4591
4592 set remoteaddresssize 32
4593
4594can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4595the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4596will be discarded.
4597
4598In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4599command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4600
4601 maint packet heythere
4602
4603sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4604disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4605time.
4606
4607The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4608target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4609downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4610
4611* Tracing can collect general expressions
4612
4613You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4614further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4615doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4616
4617* mask-address variable for Mips
4618
4619For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4620a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4621of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4622
4623* Higher serial baud rates
4624
4625GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4626230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4627to achieve all of these rates.)
4628
4629* i960 simulator
4630
4631The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4632builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4633
4634
4635*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4636
4637* New native configurations
4638
4639Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4640Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4641Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4642PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4643PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4644Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4645Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4646
4647* New targets
4648
4649Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4650Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4651Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4652Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4653MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4654MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4655MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4656Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4657Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4658Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4659NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4660
4661* New debugging protocols
4662
4663ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4664M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4665DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4666PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4667PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4668Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4669
4670* DWARF 2
4671
4672All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4673format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4674information.
4675
4676* Java frontend
4677
4678GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4679only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4680
4681* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4682
4683For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4684loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4685locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4686
4687* Live range splitting
4688
4689GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4690range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4691more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4692
4693* Hurd support
4694
4695GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4696updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4697
4698* ARM Thumb support
4699
4700GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4701instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4702instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4703accordingly.
4704
4705* MIPS16 support
4706
4707GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4708instruction set.
4709
4710* Overlay support
4711
4712GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4713linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4714will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4715control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4716additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4717in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4718
4719* info symbol
4720
4721The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4722the symbol at the specified address.
4723
4724* Trace support
4725
4726The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4727asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4728extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4729includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4730file tracepoint.c for more details.
4731
4732* MIPS simulator
4733
4734Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4735by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4736of most MIPS variants.
4737
4738* Sparc simulator
4739
4740Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4741by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4742Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4743
4744* set architecture
4745
4746For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4747basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4748architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4749the possible architectures.
4750
4751*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4752
4753* New native configurations
4754
4755Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4756M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4757PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4758PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4759PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4760RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4761
4762* New targets
4763
4764ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4765I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4766MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4767MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4768PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4769Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4770Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4771
4772* PowerPC simulator
4773
4774The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4775contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4776PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4777basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4778performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4779
4780* Solaris 2.5
4781
4782GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4783
4784* Windows 95/NT native
4785
4786GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4787To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4788which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4789Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4790ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4791
4792* dont-repeat command
4793
4794If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4795command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4796useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4797extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4798
4799* Send break instead of ^C
4800
4801The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4802rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4803GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4804
4805* Remote protocol timeout
4806
4807The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4808that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4809to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4810
4811* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4812
4813By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4814loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4815stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4816when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4817in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4818
4819Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4820/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4821automatically on hpux10.
4822
4823* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4824
4825Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4826
4827* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4828
4829When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4830may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4831the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4832every character. The default value is 1050.
4833
4834* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4835
4836If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4837a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4838replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4839details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4840remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4841to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4842
4843* Speedups for remote debugging
4844
4845GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4846the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4847and more efficient S-record downloading.
4848
4849* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4850
4851GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4852Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4853
4854*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4855
4856* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4857
4858The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4859can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4860
4861* Remote targets use caching
4862
4863Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4864remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4865it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4866debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4867off' turns the the data cache off.
4868
4869* Remote targets may have threads
4870
4871The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4872in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4873gdb/remote.c for details.
4874
4875* NetROM support
4876
4877If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4878support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4879acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4880write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4881support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4882another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4883sequence is something like
4884
4885 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4886 load <prog>
4887 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4888
4889* Macintosh host
4890
4891GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4892may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4893it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4894available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4895device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4896directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4897scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4898mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4899
4900* Autoconf
4901
4902GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4903but does simplify configuration and building.
4904
4905* hpux10
4906
4907GDB now supports hpux10.
4908
4909*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4910
4911* New native configurations
4912
4913x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4914x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4915NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4916Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4917
4918* New targets
4919
4920A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4921HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4922CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4923PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4924WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4925
4926* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4927
4928GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4929possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4930filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4931the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4932if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4933
4934* Arguments to user-defined commands
4935
4936User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4937Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4938trivial example:
4939define adder
4940 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4941
4942To execute the command use:
4943adder 1 2 3
4944
4945Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4946Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4947use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4948
4949* New `if' and `while' commands
4950
4951This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4952commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4953expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4954execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4955terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4956`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4957if the expression is zero.
4958
4959* Fortran source language mode
4960
4961GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4962Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4963variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4964with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4965Fortran compilers.
4966
4967* Better HPUX support
4968
4969Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4970running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4971processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4972for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4973that behavior do the following before running the program:
4974
4975 adb -w a.out
4976 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4977 control-d
4978
4979This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4980To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4981
4982 adb -w a.out
4983 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4984 control-d
4985
4986You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4987the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4988external linkage.
4989
4990GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4991HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4992
4993* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4994
4995You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4996commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4997current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4998"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4999associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5000configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5001
5002* New DOS host serial code
5003
5004This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5005no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5006a PC's serial port.
5007
5008*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5009
5010* New "complete" command
5011
5012This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5013were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5014
5015* Trailing space optional in prompt
5016
5017"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5018allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5019
5020* Breakpoint hit counts
5021
5022"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5023has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5024can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5025to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5026less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5027that breakpoint.
5028
5029* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5030
5031"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5032an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5033arrays actually contain only short strings.
5034
5035* Shared library breakpoints
5036
5037In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5038breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5039
5040* Hardware watchpoints
5041
5042There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5043targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5044
55241689 5045Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
5046
5047* Annotations
5048
5049Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5050and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5051
5052* Improved Irix 5 support
5053
5054GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5055
5056* Improved HPPA support
5057
5058GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5059
5060* New native configurations
5061
5062Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5063HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5064Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5065RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5066
5067* New targets
5068
5069OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5070MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5071Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5072
5073* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5074
5075There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5076This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5077
5078* Fixes
5079
5080As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5081and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5082
5083*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5084
5085* Irix 5 is now supported
5086
5087* HPPA support
5088
5089GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5090to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5091GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5092of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5093can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5094
5095
5096*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5097
5098* User visible changes:
5099
5100* Remote Debugging
5101
5102The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5103target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5104debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5105integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5106debugging info for the mips target).
5107
5108* DEC Alpha native support
5109
5110GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5111debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5112work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5113Alpha-specific notes.
5114
5115* Preliminary thread implementation
5116
5117GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5118
5119* LynxOS native and target support for 386
5120
5121This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5122to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5123for details).
5124
5125* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5126
5127This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5128mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5129call methods, ...etc.
5130
5131*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5132
5133 * User visible changes:
5134
5135Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5136supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5137other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5138somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5139
5140Filename completion now works.
5141
5142When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5143arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5144addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5145
5146All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5147vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5148should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5149your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5150to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5151
5152 * DEC alpha support
5153
5154This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5155cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5156
5157
5158*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5159
5160 * Testsuite
5161
5162This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5163The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5164via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5165
5166 * C++ demangling
5167
5168'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5169emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5170Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5171disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5172use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5173
5174 * Simulators
5175
5176GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5177So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5178Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5179
5180 * New targets supported
5181
5182H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5183H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5184SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5185Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5186IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5187
5188Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5189version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5190GO32 memory extender.
5191
5192 * New remote protocols
5193
5194MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5195
5196 * New source languages supported
5197
5198This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5199used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5200into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5201
5202
5203*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5204
5205 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5206
5207GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5208version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5209University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5210compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5211format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5212(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5213
5214Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5215
5216 * Faster and better demangling
5217
5218We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5219demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5220character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5221only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5222This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5223increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5224symbol lookups.
5225
5226`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5227from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5228compiler does not actually implement.
5229
5230 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5231
5232In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5233inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5234recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5235very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5236The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5237circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5238fix.
5239
5240The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5241release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5242
5243 * Improved configure script
5244
5245The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5246you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5247host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5248done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5249
5250We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5251version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5252`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5253The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5254only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5255We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5256
5257 * Documentation improvements
5258
5259There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5260produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5261before submitting changes.
5262
5263The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5264M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5265`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5266you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5267a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5268
5269*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5270We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5271been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5272or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5273`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5274around this problem.
5275
5276 * New features
5277
5278GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5279the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5280`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5281the target program.
5282
5283The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5284how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5285
5286 * New native hosts supported
5287
5288HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5289386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5290
5291 * New targets supported
5292
5293AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5294
5295 * New file formats supported
5296
5297BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5298HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5299
5300 * Major bug fixes
5301
5302Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5303
5304We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5305printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5306
5307We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5308for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5309release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5310
5311You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5312will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5313
5314We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5315for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5316especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5317libraries.
5318
5319The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5320information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5321command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5322any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5323when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5324
5325 * Internal improvements
5326
5327GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5328debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5329
5330GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5331Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5332symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5333contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5334shared code that handles any of them.
5335
5336 * New command line options
5337
5338We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5339
5340 * Mmalloc licensing
5341
5342The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5343General Public License.
5344
5345*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5346
5347 * Host/native/target split
5348
5349GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5350hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5351target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5352local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5353ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5354
5355The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5356GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5357is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5358code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5359any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5360built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5361handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5362
5363GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5364It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5365plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5366
5367 * New hosts supported
5368
5369HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5370386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5371386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5372
5373 * New targets supported
5374
5375Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
537668030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5377
5378 * New native hosts supported
5379
5380386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5381 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5382386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5383
5384 * New file formats supported
5385
5386BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5387supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5388format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5389
5390 * New commands
5391
5392`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5393`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5394These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5395
5396`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5397
5398You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5399scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5400prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5401executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5402
5403 * C++ improvements
5404
5405We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5406info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5407symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5408
5409Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5410
5411 * Major bug fixes
5412
5413The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5414fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5415by the compiler.
5416
5417We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5418support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5419
5420John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5421slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5422that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5423purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5424the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5425mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5426
5427Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5428about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5429completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5430we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5431
5432 * AMD 29k support
5433
5434A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5435specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5436calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5437usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5438in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5439
5440We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5441Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5442of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5443resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5444
5445 * Remote interfaces
5446
5447We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5448with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5449message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5450This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5451needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5452breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5453each instruction being stepped through.
5454
5455The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5456registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5457
5458There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5459find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5460Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5461processor with a serial port.
5462
5463 * Configuration
5464
5465Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5466`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5467supported, and what files each one uses.
5468
5469 * Library changes
5470
5471There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5472disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5473Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5474disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5475
5476The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5477Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5478can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5479grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5480
5481 * Documentation
5482
5483The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5484reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5485as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5486encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5487system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5488bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5489
5490And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5491
5492
5493*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5494
5495 * Better support for C++ function names
5496
5497GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5498names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5499(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5500single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5501Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5502
5503GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5504the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5505You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5506lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5507for the list of formats.
5508
5509 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5510
5511Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5512C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5513directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5514can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5515usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5516about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5517this problem.)
5518
5519 * New 'maintenance' command
5520
5521All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5522the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5523can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5524
5525 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5526 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5527 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5528 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5529 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5530 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5531
5532The following commands are new:
5533
5534 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5535 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5536 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5537
5538 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5539
5540We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5541(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5542be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5543read after argv processing.
5544
5545 * New hosts supported
5546
5547Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5548
55241689 5549GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5550
5551We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5552is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5553for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5554masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5555fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5556It costs extra.
5557
5558 * New targets supported
5559
5560Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5561
5562 * More smarts about finding #include files
5563
5564GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5565all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5566greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5567especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5568the one that contains your sources.
5569
5570We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5571breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5572try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5573
5574 * Interesting infernals change
5575
5576GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5577section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5578target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5579stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5580
5581 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5582
5583There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5584 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5585 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5586
5587See the ChangeLog for details.
5588
5589*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5590
5591 * New machines supported (host and target)
5592
5593IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5594
5595SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5596
5597 * New malloc package
5598
5599GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5600Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5601capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5602This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5603pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5604more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5605
5606 * info proc
5607
5608The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5609'help info proc' for details.
5610
5611 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5612
5613The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5614Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5615possible.
5616
5617 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5618
5619Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5620support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5621conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5622environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5623that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5624in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5625
5626 * Cross byte order fixes
5627
5628Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5629targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5630
5631 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5632
5633If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5634system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5635`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5636program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5637called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5638Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5639and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5640the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5641option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5642starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5643
5644You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5645the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5646information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5647slower, but makes future operations faster.
5648
5649The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5650build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5651A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5652use is:
5653
5654 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5655
5656The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5657It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5658shared across multiple host platforms.
5659
5660 * longjmp() handling
5661
5662GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5663siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5664all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5665platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5666
5667 * Solaris 2.0
5668
5669Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5670this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5671reading symbols.
5672
5673 * Bug fixes
5674
5675As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5676People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5677crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5678
5679*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5680
5681 * New machines supported (host and target)
5682
5683SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5684 (except core files)
5685BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5686Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5687
5688 * New machines supported (target)
5689
5690AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5691
5692 * C++ support
5693
5694GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5695The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5696per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5697
5698GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5699`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5700extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5701good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5702will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5703released.
5704
5705 * New features for SVR4
5706
5707GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5708shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5709only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5710
5711The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5712on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5713it prints the address mappings of the process.
5714
5715If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5716bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5717
5718 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5719
5720Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5721now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5722skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5723make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5724same code linked statically.
5725
5726 * New Getopt
5727
5728GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5729version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5730continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5731Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5732added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5733future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5734
5735 * Bugs fixed
5736
5737The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5738Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5739See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5740
5741
5742*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5743
5744 * New machines supported (host and target)
5745
5746Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5747NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5748Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5749
5750 * Almost SCO Unix support
5751
5752We had hoped to support:
5753SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5754(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5755that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5756about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5757
5758 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5759
5760GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5761debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5762is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5763send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5764reqired (if any).
5765
5766 * New Readline
5767
5768GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5769is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5770required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5771
5772 * Bugs fixed
5773
5774The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5775Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5776See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5777
5778 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5779
5780GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5781supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5782symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5783
5784Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5785mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5786debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5787mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5788version 2.
5789
5790Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5791really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5792line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5793variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5794situation somewhat.
5795
5796When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5797However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5798methods.
5799
5800We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5801DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5802encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5803
5804
5805*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5806
5807 * Improved configuration
5808
5809Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5810Porting BFD is simpler.
5811
5812 * Stepping improved
5813
5814The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5815of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5816in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5817function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5818
5819 * Bug fixing
5820
5821Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5822
5823 * New host supported (not target)
5824
5825Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5826
5827
5828*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5829
5830 * Multiple source language support
5831
5832GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5833It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5834and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5835language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5836You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5837`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5838
5839 * GDB and Modula-2
5840
5841GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5842currently under development at the State University of New York at
5843Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5844continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5845
5846Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5847debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5848symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5849
5850There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5851in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5852
5853 * set write on/off
5854
5855GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5856a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5857the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5858by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5859effect immediately.
5860
5861 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5862
5863When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5864shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5865The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5866examining core files.
5867
5868 * set listsize
5869
5870You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5871The default is 10.
5872
5873 * New machines supported (host and target)
5874
5875SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5876Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5877Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5878
5879 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5880
5881IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5882
5883 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5884
5885AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5886AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5887Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5888
5889 * New remote interfaces
5890
5891AMD 29000 Adapt
5892AMD 29000 Minimon
5893
5894
5895*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5896
5897 * New Facilities
5898
5899Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5900
5901Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5902target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5903is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5904remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5905remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5906also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5907using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5908stub on the target system.
5909
5910New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5911
5912GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5913library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5914object file types such as a.out and coff.
5915
5916There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5917refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5918
5919
5920 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5921
5922All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5923by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5924
5925For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5926``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5927Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5928
5929What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5930print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5931will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5932all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5933
5934confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5935 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5936 it is already running. Default is ON.
5937
5938editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5939 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5940 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5941 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5942 Default is ON.
5943
5944history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5945 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5946 or the value of the environment variable
5947 GDBHISTFILE.
5948
5949history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5950 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5951 HISTSIZE.
5952
5953history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5954 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5955 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5956
5957history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5958 history expansion will be performed on
5959 command line input. The default is OFF.
5960
5961radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5962 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5963 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5964
5965height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5966 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5967 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5968 variable TERM.
5969
5970width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5971 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5972 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5973 variable TERM.
5974
5975Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5976``set width'' instead.
5977
5978print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5979 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5980 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5981 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5982
5983print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5984 is OFF.
5985
5986print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5987 "raw" form if off.
5988
5989print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5990 like instructions.
5991
5992print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5993
5994
5995 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5996
5997The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5998new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5999are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6000window.
6001
6002
6003 * Support for Shared Libraries
6004
6005GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6006Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6007before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6008happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6009At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6010from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6011shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6012It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6013
6014sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6015 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6016 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6017
6018info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6019
6020
6021 * Watchpoints
6022
6023A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6024expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6025tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6026quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6027problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6028more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6029
6030watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6031
6032info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6033
6034delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6035disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6036enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6037
6038
6039 * C++ multiple inheritance
6040
6041When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6042for C++ programs.
6043
6044 * C++ exception handling
6045
6046Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6047ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6048the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6049handler's context).
6050
6051catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6052 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6053 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6054
6055info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6056 current stack frame.
6057
6058
6059 * Minor command changes
6060
6061The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6062command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6063is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6064
6065The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6066at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6067frames without printing.
6068
6069 * New directory command
6070
6071'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6072The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6073about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6074with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6075find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6076
6077 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6078
6079For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6080for more details.
6081
6082GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6083two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6084Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6085where the program that you are debugging will run.