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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.5
5
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6* REMOVED features
7
8The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
9
e374b601 10*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 11
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12* New targets
13
14Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
15
16Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
17
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18* New commands
19
20init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
21 only if it doesn't already have a value.
22
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23The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
24
25checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
26
27restart <n> Return the program state to a
28 previously saved state.
29
30info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
31
32delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
33
34set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
35 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
36
37info forks List forks of the user program that
38 are available to be debugged.
39
40fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
41 forks of the user program that are
42 available to be debugged.
43
44delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
45 that are available to be debugged (and
46 kill the forked process).
47
48detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
49 that are available to be debugged (and
50 allow the process to continue).
51
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52* New architecture
53
54Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
55
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56* Improved Windows host support
57
58GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
59native console support, and remote communications using either
60network sockets or serial ports.
61
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62* REMOVED features
63
64The ARM rdi-share module.
65
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66The Netware NLM debug server.
67
53e5f3cf 68*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 69
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70* New native configurations
71
02a677ac 72OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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73OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
74
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75* New targets
76
77Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
78
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79* New command line options
80
81--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
82--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
83 the child (debugged) program exited with.
84--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
85 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
86 specified multiple times and in conjunction
87 with the --command (-x) option.
88
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89* Deprecated commands removed
90
91The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
92removed:
93
94 Command Replacement
95 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
96 othernames set arm disassembler
97 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
98 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
99 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
100 regs info registers
101
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102* New BSD user-level threads support
103
104It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
105library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
106configurations are:
107
108FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
109FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
110OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
111
112Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
113are not yet supported.
114
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115* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
116(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
117
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118* REMOVED configurations and files
119
120VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 121Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 122National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 123
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124* New "set print array-indexes" command
125
126After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
127when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
128behavior.
129
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130* VAX floating point support
131
132GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
133
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134* User-defined command support
135
136In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
137to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
138section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
139
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140*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
141
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142* New command line option
143
144GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
145debugging.
146
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147* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
148
149GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
150information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
151by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
152proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
153to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 154
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155* Internationalization
156
157When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
158internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
159continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
160
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161* Ada
162
163Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
164implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
165into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
166
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167* New native configurations
168
169GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
170
171* Remote 'p' packet
172
173GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
174packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
175
176* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
177
178GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
179The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
180features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
181i386 application).
182
183GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
184compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
185continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
186configurations:
187
188hppa-*-hpux
189ia64-*-aix
190mips-*-irix*
191*-*-lynx
192mips-*-linux-gnu
193sds protocol
194xdr protocol
195powerpc bdm protocol
196
197Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
198made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
199
200* OBSOLETE configurations and files
201
202Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
203been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
204configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
205permanently REMOVED.
206
207h8300-*-*
208mcore-*-*
209mn10300-*-*
210ns32k-*-*
211sh64-*-*
212v850-*-*
213
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214*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
215
216* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
217
218When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
219heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
220been fixed.
221
222* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
223
224When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
225fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
226IRIX long double values).
227
228* VAX and "next"
229
230A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
231command. This problem has been fixed.
232
860660cb 233*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 234
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235* Fix for ``many threads''
236
237On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
238rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
239error message:
240
241 ptrace: No such process.
242 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
243
244This problem has been fixed.
245
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246* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
247
248Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
249GDB to dump core).
250
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251* New ``start'' command.
252
253This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
254
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255* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
256
257Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
258live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
259platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
260
261FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
262FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
263NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
264NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
265NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
266OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
267OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
268OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
269OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
270
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271* Signal trampoline code overhauled
272
273Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
274These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
275of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
276call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
277signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
278
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279Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
280features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
281include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 282
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283* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
284
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285* New native configurations
286
97dc871c 287GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 288OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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289OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
290OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 291OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 292NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 293OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 294
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295* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
296
297GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
298The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
299including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
300migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
301compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
302work, was also included.
303
304GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
305module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
306
307h8300-*-*
308mcore-*-*
309mn10300-*-*
310ns32k-*-*
311sh64-*-*
312v850-*-*
313xstormy16-*-*
314
315Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
316made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
317
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318* REMOVED configurations and files
319
320Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
321Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
322Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
323Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
324Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
325AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
326Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
327decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
328riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
329sonymips mips-sony-*
330sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
331
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332*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
333
334* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
335
336The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
337GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
338command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
339program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
340with GDB".
341
342* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
343
344Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
345libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
346cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
347GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
348shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
349the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
350are created.
351
352Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
353
354* Fixed ISO-C build problems
355
356The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
357non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
358compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
359
360* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
361
362Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
363wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
364
365* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
366
367The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
368permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
369systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
370
371* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
372
373Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
374has been updated to use constant array sizes.
375
376* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
377
378GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
379its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
380panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
381
382* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
383
384When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
385by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
386not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
387
faae5abe 388*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 389
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390* Removed --with-mmalloc
391
392Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
393conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
394
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395* Changes in AMD64 configurations
396
397The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
398the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
399and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
400you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
401
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402* Revised SPARC target
403
404The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
405FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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406support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
407from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
408(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 409
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410* New C++ demangler
411
412GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
413names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
414with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
415programs.
416
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417* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
418
419GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
420arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
421encountered these.
422
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423* C++ nested types and namespaces
424
425GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
426improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
427is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
428Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
429namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
430"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
431frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
432if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
433GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
434
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435* New native configurations
436
437NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 438OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 439OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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440OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
441OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 442
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443* New debugging protocols
444
445M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
446
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447* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
448
449The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
450and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
451tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
452
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453* OBSOLETE configurations and files
454
455Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
456been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
457configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
458permanently REMOVED.
459
460Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
461Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
462Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
463Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
464Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
465AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
466Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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467decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
468riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
469sonymips mips-sony-*
470sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 471
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472* REMOVED configurations and files
473
474SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
475SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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476Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
477Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
478H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
479HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
480HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
481HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
482PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 483386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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484Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
485 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
486 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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487SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
488SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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489Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
490Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 491
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492*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
493
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494* Objective-C
495
496Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
497integrated into GDB.
498
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499* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
500
501DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
502information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
503By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
504backtraces.
505
506The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
507have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
508DWARF 2 CFI support.
509
510* Hosted file I/O.
511
512GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
513file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
514remote protocol documentation for details.
515
516* All targets using the new architecture framework.
517
518All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
519architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
520to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
521ppc32 on ppc64).
522
523* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
524
525GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
526per-thread variables.
527
528* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
529
530GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
531GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
532
533* Separate debug info.
534
535GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
536automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
537of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
538system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
539and optional debug files.
540
541* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
542
543DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
544describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
545debugger.
546
547GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
548for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
549
550* Java
551
552A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
553Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
554considered "useable".
555
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556* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
557
558The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
559commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
560kernel.
561
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562* GDB supports logging output to a file
563
564There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
565used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 566
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567* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
568
569The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
570disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
571command.
572
e286caf2 573* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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574
575The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
576registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
577
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578* Profiling support
579
580A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
581be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
582session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
583"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
584data, for more informative profiling results.
585
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586* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
587
588The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
589option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 590"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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591
592Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
593removed.
594
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595Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
596Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
597Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
598 in a subsequent -var-update.
599
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600* New native configurations.
601
602FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
603
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604* Multi-arched targets.
605
b4263afa 606HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 607Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 608
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609* OBSOLETE configurations and files
610
611Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
612been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
613configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
614permanently REMOVED.
615
8b0e5691 616Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 617Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 618H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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619HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
620HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
621HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 622PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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623Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
624 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
625 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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626Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
627Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 628
5835abe7
NC
629* REMOVED configurations and files
630
631V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
632Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
633IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
634i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
635i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
636i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
637HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
638 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
639 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
640Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
641Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
642Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
643OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
644I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 645
a094c6fb
AC
646* MIPS $fp behavior changed
647
648The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
649the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
650context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
651address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
652The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
653
299ffc64 654*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 655
46248966
AC
656* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
657
658When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
659`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
660in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
661library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
662shared libs like mad''.
663
b9d14705 664* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 665
b9d14705
DJ
666Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
667the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
668arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
669powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 670
e0e9281e
JB
671* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
672
673GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
674and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
675they expand.
676
dd73b9bb
AC
677The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
678invocations in expression, and shows the result.
679
680The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
681macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
682
e0e9281e
JB
683Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
684information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
685your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
686information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
687
2250ee0c
CV
688* Multi-arched targets.
689
6e3ba3b8
JT
690DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
691DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 692NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 693National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
694Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
695Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 696
cd9bfe15 697* New targets.
e33ce519 698
456f8b9d
DB
699Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
700
e33ce519 701
da8ca43d
JT
702* New native configurations
703
704Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 705SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 706MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 707UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 708
cd9bfe15
AC
709* OBSOLETE configurations and files
710
711Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
712been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
713configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
714permanently REMOVED.
715
92eb23c5 716Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 717OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 718IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 719Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 720Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 721Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
722i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
723i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
724i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
725HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
726 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
727 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 728I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 729
db034ac5
AC
730* OBSOLETE languages
731
732CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
733
cd9bfe15
AC
734* REMOVED configurations and files
735
736AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
737A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
738AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
739AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
740AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
741
742testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
743
20f01a46
DH
744* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
745
746This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
747commands. The default is 1024.
748
a5941fbf
MK
749* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
750
751Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
752
89743e04
MS
753* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
754
755These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
756to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
757from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 758
9fb14e79
JB
759* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
760
761The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
762including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
763of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
764
2037aebb
AC
765*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
766
767* New targets.
768
769Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
770
771* Bug fixes
772
773gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
774mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
775Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
776
777gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
778dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
779Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
780
781Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
782Surprisingly enough, it works now.
783By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
784
785i386 hardware watchpoint support:
786avoid misses on second run for some targets.
787By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
788
37057839 789*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 790
1a703748
MS
791* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
792
793This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
794really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
795In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
796target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
797This can be a significant performance improvement on some
798(notably embedded) targets.
799
cefd4ef5
MS
800* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
801
55241689
AC
802This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
803process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
804GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
805hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 806
352ed7b4
MS
807* New command line option
808
809GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
810
811* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
812
813There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
814command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
815a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
816be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
817open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
818issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
819a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
820it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
821GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
822is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
823
fe419ffc
RE
824* Changes in ARM configurations.
825
826Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
827configuration is fully multi-arch.
828
eb7cedd9
MK
829* New native configurations
830
fe419ffc 831ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 832x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 833AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 834Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 835
c9f63e6b
CV
836* New targets
837
838Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
839
9b4ff276
AC
840* OBSOLETE configurations and files
841
842Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
843been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
844configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
845permanently REMOVED.
846
847AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
848A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
849AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
850AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
851AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
852
b4ceaee6 853testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 854
e2caac18
AC
855* REMOVED configurations and files
856
857TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 858WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
859PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
860PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
861PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 862Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
863Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
864 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 865SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 866Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
867Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
868ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 869Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 870
c2a727fa
TT
871* Changes to command line processing
872
873The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
874for the inferior from gdb's command line.
875
467d8519
TT
876* Changes to key bindings
877
878There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
879
7072a954
AC
880*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
881
882Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
883
884Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
885corrupted.
886
887Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
888
889Numerous documentation fixes.
890
891Numerous testsuite fixes.
892
34f47bc4 893*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
894
895* New native configurations
896
897Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
898x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 899MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
900MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
901ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 902s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 903
bf64bfd6
AC
904* New targets
905
def90278 906Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 907CRIS cris-axis
55241689 908UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 909
17e78a56 910* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
911
912x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 913Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
914Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
915 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
916TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
917WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 918Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
919PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
920PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
921PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 922SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
923Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
924ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 925Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 926
17e78a56
AC
927stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
928kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
929
7fcca85b
AC
930Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
931been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
932configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
933permanently REMOVED.
934
a196c81c 935* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
936
937Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
938Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
939Pyramid pyramid-*-*
940ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
941Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 942ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 943
6d6b80e5 944* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 945
6d6b80e5 946GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
947sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
948present.
949
bf64bfd6
AC
950* Other news:
951
e23194cb
EZ
952* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
953
954* The MI enabled by default.
955
956The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
957revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
958engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
959using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
960which is now deprecated.
961
962* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
963
964GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
965main features are supported:
966
967 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
968
969 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
970 extension;
971
972 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
973
974 - a Pascal expression parser.
975
976However, some important features are not yet supported.
977
978 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
979
980 - there are some problems with boolean types;
981
982 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
983 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
984
985 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
986
987 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
988
989* Changes in completion.
990
991Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
992to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
993users expect at the shell prompt.
994
995Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
996`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
997program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
998files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
999be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1000considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1001name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1002
1003`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1004
1005* New platform-independent commands:
1006
1007It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1008hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1009documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1010
1011* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1012
d7275149
MK
1013Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1014revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1015many threads as your system allows you to have.
1016
e23194cb
EZ
1017Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1018
d7275149
MK
1019Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1020multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1021
1022* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1023
1024Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1025
e23194cb
EZ
1026GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1027debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1028supported.)
1029
1030* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1031
1032Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1033breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1034implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1035put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1036and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1037registers.
1038
1039The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1040debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1041watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1042
1043* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1044
1045New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1046the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1047
1048New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1049display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1050IDT.
1051
1052New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1053from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1054New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1055a given linear address.
1056
1057GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1058program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1059which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1060
1061DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1062
6c56c069
EZ
1063It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1064
e23194cb
EZ
1065* Changes in documentation.
1066
1067All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1068Documentation License.
1069
1070Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1071manual.
1072
1073TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1074
1075Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1076manual.
1077
1078The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1079documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1080hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1081
5d6640b1
AC
1082* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1083
1084The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1085``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1086contents of this file.
1087
1a1d8446
AC
1088* gdba.el deleted
1089
1090GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1091
9debab2f 1092*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1093
c63ce875
EZ
1094* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1095
1096Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1097programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1098displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1099greater level of detail.
1100
1101* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1102
1103It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1104bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1105on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1106written.
1107
1108* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1109
1110The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1111necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1112machines ``out of the box''.
1113
1114The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1115possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1116signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1117would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1118interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1119
1120It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1121standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1122even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1123and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1124terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1125
1126The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1127enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1128also works.
1129
1130DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1131GDB.
1132
1133It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1134directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1135times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1136breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1137
ed9a39eb
JM
1138* New native configurations
1139
1140ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1141PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1142
7a292a7a
SS
1143* New targets
1144
96baa820 1145Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1146x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1147PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1148TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1149
085dd6e6
JM
1150* OBSOLETE configurations
1151
1152Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1153Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1154Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1155ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1156Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1157
9debab2f
AC
1158Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1159but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1160these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1161be permanently REMOVED.
1162
5330533d
SS
1163* Gould support removed
1164
1165Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1166
bc9e5bbf
AC
1167* New features for SVR4
1168
1169On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1170without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1171load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1172
1173* Many C++ enhancements
1174
1175C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1176in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1177
adf40b2e
JM
1178* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1179
1180A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1181sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1182with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1183``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1184
1185 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1186 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1187
43e526b9
JM
1188* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1189
1190A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1191expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1192instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1193
1194The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1195added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1196
96baa820
JM
1197* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1198
1199The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1200``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1201include ``set remote P-packet''.
1202
11cf8741
JM
1203* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1204
1205The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1206accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1207``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1208
7876dd43
DB
1209* ``apropos'' command added.
1210
1211The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1212documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1213try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1214
bc9e5bbf
AC
1215* New MI interface
1216
1217A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1218interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1219process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1220"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1221enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1222
1223 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1224
c906108c
SS
1225*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1226
1227* New native configurations
1228
1229HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1230HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1231M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1232
1233* New targets
1234
1235Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1236Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1237Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1238
1239* OBSOLETE configurations
1240
1241Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1242
1243Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1244but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1245these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1246be permanently REMOVED.
1247
1248* ANSI/ISO C
1249
1250As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1251buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1252containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1253use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1254available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1255configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1256information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1257already.
1258
1259* Readline 2.2
1260
1261GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1262
1263* set extension-language
1264
1265You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1266languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1267you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1268 set extension-language .c c++
1269The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1270and their associated languages.
1271
1272* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1273
1274When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1275you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1276PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1277
1278 set processor NAME
1279
1280sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1281following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1282
1283 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1284 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1285 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1286 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1287 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1288 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1289 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1290 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1291 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1292 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1293 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1294
1295At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1296special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1297registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1298only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1299
1300* HP-UX support
1301
1302Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1303more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1304library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1305support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1306for xdb and dbx commands.
1307
1308* Catchpoints
1309
1310HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1311generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1312to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1313
1314This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1315argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1316output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1317
1318* Debugging across forks
1319
1320On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1321in the inferior.
1322
1323* TUI
1324
1325HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1326it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1327configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1328
1329* GDB remote protocol additions
1330
1331A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1332Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1333fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1334allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1335
1336For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1337full 64-bit address. The command
1338
1339 set remoteaddresssize 32
1340
1341can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1342the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1343will be discarded.
1344
1345In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1346command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1347
1348 maint packet heythere
1349
1350sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1351disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1352time.
1353
1354The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1355target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1356downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1357
1358* Tracing can collect general expressions
1359
1360You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1361further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1362doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1363
1364* mask-address variable for Mips
1365
1366For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1367a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1368of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1369
1370* Higher serial baud rates
1371
1372GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1373230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1374to achieve all of these rates.)
1375
1376* i960 simulator
1377
1378The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1379builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1380
1381
1382*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1383
1384* New native configurations
1385
1386Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1387Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1388Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1389PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1390PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1391Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1392Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1393
1394* New targets
1395
1396Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1397Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1398Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1399Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1400MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1401MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1402MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1403Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1404Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1405Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1406NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1407
1408* New debugging protocols
1409
1410ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1411M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1412DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1413PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1414PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1415Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1416
1417* DWARF 2
1418
1419All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1420format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1421information.
1422
1423* Java frontend
1424
1425GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1426only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1427
1428* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1429
1430For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1431loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1432locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1433
1434* Live range splitting
1435
1436GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1437range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1438more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1439
1440* Hurd support
1441
1442GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1443updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1444
1445* ARM Thumb support
1446
1447GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1448instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1449instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1450accordingly.
1451
1452* MIPS16 support
1453
1454GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1455instruction set.
1456
1457* Overlay support
1458
1459GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1460linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1461will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1462control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1463additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1464in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1465
1466* info symbol
1467
1468The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1469the symbol at the specified address.
1470
1471* Trace support
1472
1473The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1474asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1475extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1476includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1477file tracepoint.c for more details.
1478
1479* MIPS simulator
1480
1481Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1482by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1483of most MIPS variants.
1484
1485* Sparc simulator
1486
1487Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1488by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1489Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1490
1491* set architecture
1492
1493For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1494basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1495architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1496the possible architectures.
1497
1498*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1499
1500* New native configurations
1501
1502Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1503M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1504PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1505PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1506PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1507RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1508
1509* New targets
1510
1511ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1512I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1513MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1514MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1515PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1516Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1517Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1518
1519* PowerPC simulator
1520
1521The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1522contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1523PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1524basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1525performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1526
1527* Solaris 2.5
1528
1529GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1530
1531* Windows 95/NT native
1532
1533GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1534To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1535which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1536Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1537ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1538
1539* dont-repeat command
1540
1541If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1542command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1543useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1544extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1545
1546* Send break instead of ^C
1547
1548The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1549rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1550GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1551
1552* Remote protocol timeout
1553
1554The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1555that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1556to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1557
1558* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1559
1560By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1561loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1562stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1563when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1564in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1565
1566Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1567/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1568automatically on hpux10.
1569
1570* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1571
1572Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1573
1574* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1575
1576When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1577may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1578the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1579every character. The default value is 1050.
1580
1581* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1582
1583If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1584a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1585replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1586details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1587remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1588to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1589
1590* Speedups for remote debugging
1591
1592GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1593the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1594and more efficient S-record downloading.
1595
1596* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1597
1598GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1599Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1600
1601*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1602
1603* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1604
1605The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1606can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1607
1608* Remote targets use caching
1609
1610Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1611remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1612it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1613debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1614off' turns the the data cache off.
1615
1616* Remote targets may have threads
1617
1618The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1619in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1620gdb/remote.c for details.
1621
1622* NetROM support
1623
1624If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1625support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1626acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1627write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1628support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1629another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1630sequence is something like
1631
1632 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1633 load <prog>
1634 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1635
1636* Macintosh host
1637
1638GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1639may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1640it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1641available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1642device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1643directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1644scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1645mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1646
1647* Autoconf
1648
1649GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1650but does simplify configuration and building.
1651
1652* hpux10
1653
1654GDB now supports hpux10.
1655
1656*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1657
1658* New native configurations
1659
1660x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1661x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1662NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1663Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1664
1665* New targets
1666
1667A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1668HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1669CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1670PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1671WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1672
1673* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1674
1675GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1676possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1677filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1678the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1679if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1680
1681* Arguments to user-defined commands
1682
1683User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1684Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1685trivial example:
1686define adder
1687 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1688
1689To execute the command use:
1690adder 1 2 3
1691
1692Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1693Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1694use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1695
1696* New `if' and `while' commands
1697
1698This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1699commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1700expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1701execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1702terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1703`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1704if the expression is zero.
1705
1706* Fortran source language mode
1707
1708GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1709Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1710variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1711with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1712Fortran compilers.
1713
1714* Better HPUX support
1715
1716Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1717running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1718processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1719for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1720that behavior do the following before running the program:
1721
1722 adb -w a.out
1723 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1724 control-d
1725
1726This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1727To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1728
1729 adb -w a.out
1730 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1731 control-d
1732
1733You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1734the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1735external linkage.
1736
1737GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1738HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1739
1740* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1741
1742You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1743commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1744current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1745"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1746associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1747configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1748
1749* New DOS host serial code
1750
1751This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1752no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1753a PC's serial port.
1754
1755*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1756
1757* New "complete" command
1758
1759This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1760were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1761
1762* Trailing space optional in prompt
1763
1764"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1765allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1766
1767* Breakpoint hit counts
1768
1769"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1770has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1771can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1772to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1773less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1774that breakpoint.
1775
1776* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1777
1778"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1779an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1780arrays actually contain only short strings.
1781
1782* Shared library breakpoints
1783
1784In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1785breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1786
1787* Hardware watchpoints
1788
1789There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1790targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1791
55241689 1792Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1793
1794* Annotations
1795
1796Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1797and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1798
1799* Improved Irix 5 support
1800
1801GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1802
1803* Improved HPPA support
1804
1805GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1806
1807* New native configurations
1808
1809Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1810HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1811Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1812RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1813
1814* New targets
1815
1816OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1817MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1818Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1819
1820* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1821
1822There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1823This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1824
1825* Fixes
1826
1827As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1828and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1829
1830*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1831
1832* Irix 5 is now supported
1833
1834* HPPA support
1835
1836GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1837to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1838GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1839of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1840can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1841
1842
1843*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1844
1845* User visible changes:
1846
1847* Remote Debugging
1848
1849The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1850target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1851debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1852integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1853debugging info for the mips target).
1854
1855* DEC Alpha native support
1856
1857GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1858debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1859work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1860Alpha-specific notes.
1861
1862* Preliminary thread implementation
1863
1864GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1865
1866* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1867
1868This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1869to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1870for details).
1871
1872* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1873
1874This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1875mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1876call methods, ...etc.
1877
1878*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1879
1880 * User visible changes:
1881
1882Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1883supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1884other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1885somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1886
1887Filename completion now works.
1888
1889When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1890arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1891addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1892
1893All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1894vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1895should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1896your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1897to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1898
1899 * DEC alpha support
1900
1901This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1902cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1903
1904
1905*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1906
1907 * Testsuite
1908
1909This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1910The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1911via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1912
1913 * C++ demangling
1914
1915'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1916emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1917Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1918disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1919use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1920
1921 * Simulators
1922
1923GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1924So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1925Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1926
1927 * New targets supported
1928
1929H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1930H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1931SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1932Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1933IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1934
1935Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1936version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1937GO32 memory extender.
1938
1939 * New remote protocols
1940
1941MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1942
1943 * New source languages supported
1944
1945This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1946used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1947into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1948
1949
1950*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1951
1952 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1953
1954GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1955version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1956University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1957compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1958format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1959(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1960
1961Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1962
1963 * Faster and better demangling
1964
1965We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1966demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1967character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1968only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1969This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1970increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1971symbol lookups.
1972
1973`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1974from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1975compiler does not actually implement.
1976
1977 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1978
1979In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1980inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1981recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1982very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1983The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1984circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1985fix.
1986
1987The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1988release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1989
1990 * Improved configure script
1991
1992The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1993you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1994host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1995done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1996
1997We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1998version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1999`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2000The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2001only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2002We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2003
2004 * Documentation improvements
2005
2006There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2007produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2008before submitting changes.
2009
2010The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2011M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2012`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2013you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2014a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2015
2016*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2017We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2018been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2019or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2020`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2021around this problem.
2022
2023 * New features
2024
2025GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2026the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2027`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2028the target program.
2029
2030The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2031how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2032
2033 * New native hosts supported
2034
2035HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2036386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2037
2038 * New targets supported
2039
2040AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2041
2042 * New file formats supported
2043
2044BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2045HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2046
2047 * Major bug fixes
2048
2049Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2050
2051We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2052printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2053
2054We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2055for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2056release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2057
2058You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2059will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2060
2061We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2062for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2063especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2064libraries.
2065
2066The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2067information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2068command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2069any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2070when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2071
2072 * Internal improvements
2073
2074GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2075debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2076
2077GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2078Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2079symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2080contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2081shared code that handles any of them.
2082
2083 * New command line options
2084
2085We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2086
2087 * Mmalloc licensing
2088
2089The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2090General Public License.
2091
2092*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2093
2094 * Host/native/target split
2095
2096GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2097hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2098target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2099local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2100ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2101
2102The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2103GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2104is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2105code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2106any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2107built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2108handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2109
2110GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2111It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2112plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2113
2114 * New hosts supported
2115
2116HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2117386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2118386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2119
2120 * New targets supported
2121
2122Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
212368030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2124
2125 * New native hosts supported
2126
2127386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2128 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2129386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2130
2131 * New file formats supported
2132
2133BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2134supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2135format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2136
2137 * New commands
2138
2139`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2140`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2141These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2142
2143`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2144
2145You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2146scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2147prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2148executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2149
2150 * C++ improvements
2151
2152We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2153info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2154symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2155
2156Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2157
2158 * Major bug fixes
2159
2160The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2161fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2162by the compiler.
2163
2164We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2165support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2166
2167John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2168slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2169that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2170purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2171the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2172mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2173
2174Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2175about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2176completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2177we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2178
2179 * AMD 29k support
2180
2181A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2182specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2183calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2184usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2185in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2186
2187We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2188Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2189of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2190resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2191
2192 * Remote interfaces
2193
2194We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2195with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2196message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2197This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2198needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2199breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2200each instruction being stepped through.
2201
2202The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2203registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2204
2205There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2206find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2207Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2208processor with a serial port.
2209
2210 * Configuration
2211
2212Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2213`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2214supported, and what files each one uses.
2215
2216 * Library changes
2217
2218There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2219disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2220Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2221disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2222
2223The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2224Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2225can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2226grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2227
2228 * Documentation
2229
2230The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2231reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2232as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2233encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2234system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2235bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2236
2237And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2238
2239
2240*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2241
2242 * Better support for C++ function names
2243
2244GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2245names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2246(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2247single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2248Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2249
2250GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2251the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2252You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2253lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2254for the list of formats.
2255
2256 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2257
2258Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2259C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2260directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2261can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2262usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2263about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2264this problem.)
2265
2266 * New 'maintenance' command
2267
2268All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2269the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2270can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2271
2272 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2273 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2274 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2275 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2276 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2277 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2278
2279The following commands are new:
2280
2281 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2282 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2283 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2284
2285 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2286
2287We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2288(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2289be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2290read after argv processing.
2291
2292 * New hosts supported
2293
2294Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2295
55241689 2296GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2297
2298We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2299is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2300for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2301masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2302fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2303It costs extra.
2304
2305 * New targets supported
2306
2307Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2308
2309 * More smarts about finding #include files
2310
2311GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2312all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2313greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2314especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2315the one that contains your sources.
2316
2317We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2318breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2319try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2320
2321 * Interesting infernals change
2322
2323GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2324section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2325target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2326stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2327
2328 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2329
2330There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2331 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2332 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2333
2334See the ChangeLog for details.
2335
2336*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2337
2338 * New machines supported (host and target)
2339
2340IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2341
2342SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2343
2344 * New malloc package
2345
2346GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2347Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2348capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2349This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2350pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2351more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2352
2353 * info proc
2354
2355The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2356'help info proc' for details.
2357
2358 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2359
2360The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2361Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2362possible.
2363
2364 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2365
2366Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2367support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2368conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2369environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2370that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2371in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2372
2373 * Cross byte order fixes
2374
2375Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2376targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2377
2378 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2379
2380If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2381system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2382`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2383program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2384called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2385Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2386and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2387the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2388option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2389starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2390
2391You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2392the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2393information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2394slower, but makes future operations faster.
2395
2396The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2397build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2398A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2399use is:
2400
2401 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2402
2403The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2404It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2405shared across multiple host platforms.
2406
2407 * longjmp() handling
2408
2409GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2410siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2411all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2412platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2413
2414 * Solaris 2.0
2415
2416Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2417this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2418reading symbols.
2419
2420 * Bug fixes
2421
2422As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2423People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2424crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2425
2426*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2427
2428 * New machines supported (host and target)
2429
2430SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2431 (except core files)
2432BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2433Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2434
2435 * New machines supported (target)
2436
2437AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2438
2439 * C++ support
2440
2441GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2442The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2443per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2444
2445GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2446`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2447extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2448good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2449will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2450released.
2451
2452 * New features for SVR4
2453
2454GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2455shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2456only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2457
2458The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2459on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2460it prints the address mappings of the process.
2461
2462If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2463bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2464
2465 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2466
2467Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2468now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2469skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2470make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2471same code linked statically.
2472
2473 * New Getopt
2474
2475GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2476version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2477continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2478Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2479added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2480future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2481
2482 * Bugs fixed
2483
2484The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2485Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2486See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2487
2488
2489*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2490
2491 * New machines supported (host and target)
2492
2493Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2494NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2495Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2496
2497 * Almost SCO Unix support
2498
2499We had hoped to support:
2500SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2501(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2502that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2503about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2504
2505 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2506
2507GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2508debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2509is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2510send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2511reqired (if any).
2512
2513 * New Readline
2514
2515GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2516is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2517required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2518
2519 * Bugs fixed
2520
2521The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2522Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2523See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2524
2525 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2526
2527GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2528supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2529symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2530
2531Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2532mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2533debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2534mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2535version 2.
2536
2537Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2538really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2539line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2540variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2541situation somewhat.
2542
2543When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2544However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2545methods.
2546
2547We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2548DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2549encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2550
2551
2552*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2553
2554 * Improved configuration
2555
2556Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2557Porting BFD is simpler.
2558
2559 * Stepping improved
2560
2561The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2562of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2563in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2564function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2565
2566 * Bug fixing
2567
2568Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2569
2570 * New host supported (not target)
2571
2572Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2573
2574
2575*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2576
2577 * Multiple source language support
2578
2579GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2580It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2581and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2582language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2583You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2584`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2585
2586 * GDB and Modula-2
2587
2588GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2589currently under development at the State University of New York at
2590Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2591continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2592
2593Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2594debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2595symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2596
2597There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2598in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2599
2600 * set write on/off
2601
2602GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2603a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2604the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2605by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2606effect immediately.
2607
2608 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2609
2610When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2611shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2612The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2613examining core files.
2614
2615 * set listsize
2616
2617You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2618The default is 10.
2619
2620 * New machines supported (host and target)
2621
2622SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2623Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2624Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2625
2626 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2627
2628IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2629
2630 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2631
2632AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2633AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2634Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2635
2636 * New remote interfaces
2637
2638AMD 29000 Adapt
2639AMD 29000 Minimon
2640
2641
2642*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2643
2644 * New Facilities
2645
2646Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2647
2648Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2649target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2650is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2651remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2652remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2653also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2654using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2655stub on the target system.
2656
2657New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2658
2659GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2660library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2661object file types such as a.out and coff.
2662
2663There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2664refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2665
2666
2667 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2668
2669All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2670by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2671
2672For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2673``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2674Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2675
2676What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2677print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2678will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2679all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2680
2681confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2682 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2683 it is already running. Default is ON.
2684
2685editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2686 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2687 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2688 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2689 Default is ON.
2690
2691history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2692 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2693 or the value of the environment variable
2694 GDBHISTFILE.
2695
2696history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2697 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2698 HISTSIZE.
2699
2700history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2701 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2702 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2703
2704history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2705 history expansion will be performed on
2706 command line input. The default is OFF.
2707
2708radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2709 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2710 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2711
2712height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2713 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2714 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2715 variable TERM.
2716
2717width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2718 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2719 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2720 variable TERM.
2721
2722Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2723``set width'' instead.
2724
2725print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2726 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2727 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2728 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2729
2730print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2731 is OFF.
2732
2733print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2734 "raw" form if off.
2735
2736print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2737 like instructions.
2738
2739print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2740
2741
2742 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2743
2744The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2745new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2746are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2747window.
2748
2749
2750 * Support for Shared Libraries
2751
2752GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2753Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2754before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2755happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2756At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2757from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2758shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2759It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2760
2761sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2762 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2763 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2764
2765info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2766
2767
2768 * Watchpoints
2769
2770A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2771expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2772tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2773quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2774problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2775more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2776
2777watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2778
2779info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2780
2781delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2782disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2783enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2784
2785
2786 * C++ multiple inheritance
2787
2788When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2789for C++ programs.
2790
2791 * C++ exception handling
2792
2793Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2794ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2795the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2796handler's context).
2797
2798catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2799 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2800 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2801
2802info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2803 current stack frame.
2804
2805
2806 * Minor command changes
2807
2808The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2809command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2810is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2811
2812The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2813at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2814frames without printing.
2815
2816 * New directory command
2817
2818'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2819The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2820about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2821with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2822find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2823
2824 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2825
2826For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2827for more details.
2828
2829GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2830two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2831Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2832where the program that you are debugging will run.