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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.8
5
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6* Python Scripting
7 You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
8
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9* New Python-based convenience functions:
10
11 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
12 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
13 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
14 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
15
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16* New commands
17
18queue-signal signal-name-or-number
19 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
20
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21* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
22 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
23 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
24 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
25 at resume time.
26
27* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
28 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
29 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
30 switched threads meanwhile.
31
919b9a93 32*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 33
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34* New command line options
35
36-D data-directory
37 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
38
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39* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
40 as specified in ISO C99.
41
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42* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
43 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 44
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45* Guile scripting
46
47 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
48 available is determined at configure time.
49 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
50 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
51
52* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
53
54guile [code]
55gu [code]
56 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
57
58guile-repl
59gr
60 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
61
62info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
63 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
64
65* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
66 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
67
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68* New options
69
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70set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
71show print symbol-loading
72 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
73 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
74 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
75 becomes less useful.
76
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77set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
78show guile print-stack
79 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
80
81set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
82show auto-load guile-scripts
83 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
84
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85maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
86maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
87 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
88 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
89 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
90 usage of this option.
91
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92set auto-connect-native-target
93
94 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
95 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
96 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
97
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98set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
99show record btrace replay-memory-access
100 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
101
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102maint set target-async (on|off)
103maint show target-async
104 This controls whether GDB targets operate in syncronous or
105 asyncronous mode. Normally the default is asyncronous, if it is
106 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
107 occurring only in syncronous mode.
108
109set mi-async (on|off)
110show mi-async
111 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
112 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
113
114* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
115 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
116
117* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
118 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
119 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
120 "set target-async on" command.
121
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122* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
123
124 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
125 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
126 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
127 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
128 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
129
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130* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
131 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
132 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
133
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134* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
135 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
136 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
137 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
138 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
139 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
140 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
141
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142* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
143 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
144
066ce621 145* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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146 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
147 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 148
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149* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
150 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
151 memory or registers.
152
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153* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
154
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155* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
156 remote. It now works with all targets.
157
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158* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
159 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
160 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
161 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
162 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
163 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
164 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
165 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
166 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
167 target-stack".
168
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169* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
170 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
171 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
172
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173* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
174
175* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
176 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
177 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
178
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179* New remote packets
180
181qXfer:btrace:read's annex
182 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
183 branch trace incrementally.
184
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185* Python Scripting
186
187 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
188 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
189 available.
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190 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
191 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
192 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
193 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
194 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 195
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196* New targets
197PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
198
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199* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
200 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
201 its alias "share", instead.
202
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203* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
204 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
205 instead.
206
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207* MI changes
208
209 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
210 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
211 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
212 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
213 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
214 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
215 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
216 commands and CLI execution commands.
217
b7bba001 218*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 219
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220* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
221 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
222 recording has been added.
223
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224* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
225
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226* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
227 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
228
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229* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
230 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
231 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
232 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
233 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
234 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
235 "void".
236
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237* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
238
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239* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
240
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241* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
242 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
243 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
244 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
245
246 (gdb) p $rax
247 $1 = <not saved>
248
249 (gdb) info registers rax
250 rax <not saved>
251
252 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
253 "*value not available*".
254
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255* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
256 to binaries.
257
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258* Python scripting
259
260 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 261 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 262 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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263 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
264 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 265 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 266
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267* New targets
268
269Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
270Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 271Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 272
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273* Removed native configurations
274
275Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
276been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
277
278arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
279i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
280i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
281i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
282m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
283sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
284vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
285
bd712aed 286* New commands:
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287catch rethrow
288 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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289maint check-psymtabs
290 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
291maint check-symtabs
292 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
293maint expand-symtabs
294 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 295
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296show configuration
297 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
298
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299maint set|show per-command
300maint set|show per-command space
301maint set|show per-command time
302maint set|show per-command symtab
303 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
304
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305remove-symbol-file FILENAME
306remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
307 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
308 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
309 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
310
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311info exceptions
312info exceptions REGEXP
313 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
314 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
315 are listed.
316
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317* New options
318
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319set debug symfile off|on
320show debug symfile
321 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
322 symbol tables within those files
323
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324set print raw frame-arguments
325show print raw frame-arguments
326 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
327 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
328
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329set remote trace-status-packet
330show remote trace-status-packet
331 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
332
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333set debug nios2
334show debug nios2
335 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
336
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337set range-stepping
338show range-stepping
339 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
340
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341set startup-with-shell
342show startup-with-shell
343 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
344 directly.
345
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346set code-cache
347show code-cache
348 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
349 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
350
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351* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
352 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
353 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
354 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
355 "set height 0".
356
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357* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
358 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
359 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
360
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361* New command-line options
362--configuration
363 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
364
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365* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
366 buffer in Common Trace Format.
367
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368* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
369 GDB command gcore.
370
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371* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
372
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373* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
374 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
375
376* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
377 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
378
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379* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
380 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
381 due to an uncaught signal.
382
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383* MI changes
384
403cb6b1 385 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
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386 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
387 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 388
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389 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
390 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
391
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392 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
393 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
394 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
395 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
396 "undefined-command-error-code".
397
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398 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
399 Trace Format now.
400
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401 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
402
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403 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
404 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
405 are displayed.
406
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407 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
408 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
409
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410 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
411 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
412 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
413
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414 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
415 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
416 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
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417 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
418 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
419 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 420
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421 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
422 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
423
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424 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
425 the new "info exceptions" command.
426
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427* New system-wide configuration scripts
428 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
429 configuration scripts for the following systems:
430 ** ElinOS
431 ** Wind River Linux
432
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433* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
434 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
435 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
436 below.
437
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438* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
439 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
440
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441* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
442 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
443 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
444
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445* New remote packets
446
447vCont;r
448
449 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
450 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
451 involvemement at each single-step.
452
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453qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
454 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
455 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
456 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
457 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
458 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
459 speedup.
460
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461* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
462
463 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
464 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
465
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466 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
467 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
468 trace state variables.
469
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470 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
471 target.
472
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473* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
474 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
475
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476* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
477
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478* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
479 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
480 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
481 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
482
2d450646 483*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 484
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485* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
486 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
487 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
488 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
489
490set|show record full insn-number-max
491set|show record full stop-at-limit
492set|show record full memory-query
493
494* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
495 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
496 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
497 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
498 This new recording method can be enabled using:
499
500record btrace
501
502 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
503 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
504
505* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
506 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
507 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
508
509record instruction-history prints the execution history at
510 instruction granularity
511
512record function-call-history prints the execution history at
513 function granularity
514
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AT
515* New native configurations
516
51d66578 517ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 518FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 519x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 520Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 521
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JB
522* New targets
523
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MS
524ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
525ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 526Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 527x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 528Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 529
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530* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
531 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
532 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
533 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
534 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
535 --data-directory command-line option.
536
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537* New command line options:
538
539-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
540 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
541
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542* Removed command line options
543
544-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
545 Emacs.
546
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TT
547* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
548 type formatting.
549
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TT
550* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
551
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552* Python scripting
553
554 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
555
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556 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
557
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558 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
559
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560 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
561
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562 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
563 of architecture in the Python API.
564
565 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
566 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
567
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568* New Python-based convenience functions:
569
570 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
571 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
572 ** $_strlen(str)
573 ** $_regex(str, regex)
574
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575* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
576 given an argument.
577
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578* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
579 default for GCC since November 2000.
580
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581* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
582
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YQ
583* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
584 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
585
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586* New configure options
587
588--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
589 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
590 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
591 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
592 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
593 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
594--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
595 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
596 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 597
d6b28940
TT
598* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
599
ab04a2af
TT
600catch signal
601 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
602 conditions to be attached.
603
d6b28940
TT
604maint info bfds
605 List the BFDs known to GDB.
606
8315665e
YPK
607python-interactive [command]
608pi [command]
609 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
610 and print the result of expressions.
611
612py [command]
613 "py" is a new alias for "python".
614
18a9fc12
TT
615enable type-printer [name]...
616disable type-printer [name]...
617 Enable or disable type printers.
618
aa9259cc
TS
619* Removed commands
620
621 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
622 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
623 instead.
624
53342f27
TT
625* New options
626
627set print type methods (on|off)
628show print type methods
629 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
630 The default is to show them.
631
632set print type typedefs (on|off)
633show print type typedefs
634 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
635 The default is to show them.
636
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JK
637set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
638show filename-display
639 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
640 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
641
e9f1758d
PA
642set trace-buffer-size
643show trace-buffer-size
644 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
645
a46c1e42
PA
646set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
647show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
648 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
649
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PA
650set debug aarch64
651show debug aarch64
652 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
653 The default is off.
654
655set debug coff-pe-read
656show debug coff-pe-read
657 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
658 exported symbols.
659
660set debug mach-o
661show debug mach-o
662 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
663 processing.
664
665set debug notification
666show debug notification
667 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
668
5b9afe8a
YQ
669* MI changes
670
671 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
672 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
673 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
674 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
675 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
676 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
677 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
678 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
679 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
680 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
681 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 682 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 683 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
684 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
685 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
686 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
687 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
688 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
689 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
690 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
691 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
692 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
693 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
694 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
695 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 696
608e2dbb
TT
697* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
698 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
699 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
700 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
701
f6f899bf
HAQ
702* New remote packets
703
704QTBuffer:size
705 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
706 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
707
10782d74
MM
708Qbtrace:bts
709 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
710 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
711 qSupported query.
712
713Qbtrace:off
714 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
715 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
716
717qXfer:btrace:read
718 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
719 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
720
80c8d323 721*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 722
1b3371b1
L
723* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
724 for more x32 ABI info.
725
d0e64392
MR
726* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
727
4cc0665f
MR
728* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
729
85d4a676
SS
730* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
731 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
732 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
733 "info os files" lists file descriptors
734 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
735 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
736 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
737 "info os msg" lists message queues
738 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
739
55aa24fb
SDJ
740* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
741 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
742 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
743 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
744 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
745 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
746
72508ac0
PO
747* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
748 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
749 record/replay support.
750
16899756
DE
751* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
752
4795f398
DE
753* Python scripting
754
7d74f244
DE
755 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
756 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
757
4795f398
DE
758 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
759
50897289
TT
760 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
761 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
762
64e7d9dd
TT
763 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
764
765 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
766 the source at which the symbol was defined.
767
f0823d2c
TT
768 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
769 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
770 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
771 symbol's value.
772
7b282c5a
SCR
773 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
774 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
775
a20ee7a4
SCR
776 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
777 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
778 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
779
7efc75aa
SCR
780 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
781 object associated with a PC value.
782
ee0bf529
SCR
783 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
784 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
785
a766d390
DE
786* Go language support.
787 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
788 language.
789
e0f9f062
DE
790* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
791 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
792
217bff3e
JK
793* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
794 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
795
cafec441
TT
796* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
797 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
798 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
799 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
800 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
801 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
802
4aac40c8
TT
803* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
804 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
805 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
806 build/libcpp/expr.c.
807
d99bd577
UW
808* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
809 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
810
53fe1783
GB
811* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
812 since December 2007.
813
e41eec66
JB
814* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
815 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
816 command does. For instance:
817
818 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
819
820 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
821 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
822 created, using the "condition" command.
823
5808517f
YQ
824* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
825 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
826
481860b3
GB
827* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
828
829* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
830 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
831 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
832 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
833 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
834 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
835 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
836 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 837
156942c7
DE
838 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
839 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
840 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
841 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
842 the .gdb_index section.
843
927fbba6
JB
844* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
845
20388dd6
YQ
846* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
847 target.
848
f3e0e960
SS
849* MI changes
850
851 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
852
37ce89eb
SS
853 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
854
edcc5120
TT
855* New commands
856
e615022a
DE
857 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
858 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
859 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
860
edcc5120
TT
861 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
862 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
863
816338b5
SS
864 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
865 several hits.
866
57651221 867 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
868 C++ and Java objects.
869
06fc020f 870 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 871 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
872 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
873 configured with '--with-python'.
874
bf88dd68
JK
875 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
876 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
877 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
878 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
879 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
880 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
881 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
882
883 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
884 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
885 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
886 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
887
e7e0cddf
SS
888 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
889 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
890 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
891 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
892
9cb709b6
TT
893 ** "set print symbol"
894 "show print symbol"
895 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
896 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
897 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
898
2d4c29c5
TS
899* Deprecated commands
900
901 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
902 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
903
a58b110a
KB
904* New targets
905
906Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 907HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 908
72895ff6
LM
909* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
910 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
911 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
912 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
913 evaluates to true.
914
915* New options
916
4cc0665f
MR
917set mips compression
918show mips compression
919 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
920 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
921 mips16
922 micromips
923 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
924
72895ff6
LM
925set breakpoint condition-evaluation
926show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 927 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
928 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
929 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
930 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
931 target.
932
bf88dd68
JK
933set auto-load off
934 Disable auto-loading globally.
935
936show auto-load
937 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
938
939set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
940show auto-load gdb-scripts
941 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
942
943set auto-load python-scripts on|off
944show auto-load python-scripts
945 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
946
947set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
948show auto-load local-gdbinit
949 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
950
951set auto-load libthread-db on|off
952show auto-load libthread-db
953 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
954
7349ff92 955set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 956show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
957 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
958 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
959 of the directories listed by this option.
960 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
961
bccbefd2
JK
962set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
963show auto-load safe-path
964 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
965 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
966
4dc84fd1
JK
967set debug auto-load on|off
968show debug auto-load
969 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
970
d3ce09f5 971set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 972show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
973 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
974 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
975 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
976 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
977
978set dprintf-function <expr>
979show dprintf-function
980set dprintf-channel <expr>
981show dprintf-channel
982 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
983 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
984
d3ce09f5
SS
985set disconnected-dprintf on|off
986show disconnected-dprintf
987 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
988 after GDB disconnects.
989
6dea1fbd
JK
990* New configure options
991
7349ff92
JK
992--with-auto-load-dir
993 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
994 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
995 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
996 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
997 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 998
6dea1fbd
JK
999--with-auto-load-safe-path
1000 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1001 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1002
1003--without-auto-load-safe-path
1004 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1005 security feature.
1006
72895ff6
LM
1007* New remote packets
1008
74c48cbb
PA
1009z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1010
72895ff6
LM
1011 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1012 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1013 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1014 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1015
9b224c5e
PA
1016QProgramSignals:
1017
1018 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1019 program without GDB involvement.
1020
8320cc4f
JK
1021* New command line options
1022
1023--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1024 before loading inferior.
1025--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1026 execute it before loading inferior.
1027
8837a20f
JB
1028*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1029
f8eba3c6
TT
1030* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1031 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1032 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1033 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1034 inferior changes.
1035
1bfeeb0f
JL
1036* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1037 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1038
480a3f21
PW
1039* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1040 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1041 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1042 target hardware watchpoint.
1043
1044 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1045 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1046 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1047 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1048
3a7bf607
PM
1049* Python scripting
1050
32d1c362 1051 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1052 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1053 existing one.
1054
3a7bf607 1055 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1056 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1057 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1058 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1059 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1060 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1061
baacfb07 1062 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1063 Python API.
713389e0 1064
fa3a4f15
PM
1065 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1066 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1067 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1068 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1069 corresponding value.
1070
5e239b84
PM
1071 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1072 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1073 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1074 on GDB start-up.
1075
9df2fbc4
PM
1076 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1077 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1078 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1079 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1080
457e09f0
DE
1081 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1082
6839b47f
KP
1083 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1084 "gdb.breakpoints".
1085
cc72b2a2
KP
1086 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1087 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1088 available in the CLI.
1089
84ad80e6
PK
1090 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1091 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1092 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1093 "some_type.items()".
1094
20c168b5
KP
1095 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1096 new object file.
1097
03c3051a
PK
1098 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1099 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1100 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1101 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1102 any anonymous fields.
1103
7376e450
TT
1104* MI changes
1105
1106 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1107 "solib-event".
1108
1109 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1110 "=breakpoint-modified".
1111
1112 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1113
98a5dd13
DE
1114* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1115 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1116 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1117 lives.
1118
1119 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1120 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1121 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1122 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1123 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1124
1125 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1126 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1127
478aac75
DE
1128* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1129 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1130 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1131 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1132 use this option to specify where to find it.
1133
9c06b0b4
TJB
1134* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1135 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1136 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1137 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1138 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1139 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1140 section in the user manual for more details.
1141
03f2bd59
JK
1142* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1143 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1144 become available after that.
1145
71eba9c2 1146* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1147
2bda9cc5
JK
1148* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1149 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1150 gcc version 4.7.
1151
ed59ded5
DE
1152* New commands
1153
1154!SHELL COMMAND
1155 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1156 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1157
9c06b0b4
TJB
1158* Changed commands
1159
1160watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1161 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1162 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1163
dbaefcf7
DE
1164info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1165 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1166 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1167
71eba9c2 1168info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1169 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1170 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1171 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1172 name starts with a hyphen.
1173
3065dfb6
SS
1174collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1175 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1176 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1177 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1178 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1179 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1180 number of bytes that will be collected.
1181
f196051f
SS
1182tstart [NOTES]
1183 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1184 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1185 setting the variable trace-notes.
1186
1187tstop [NOTES]
1188 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1189 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1190 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1191 trace-stop-notes.
1192
d248b706
KY
1193* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1194 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1195 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1196 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1197 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1198 is running.
1199
405f8e94
SS
1200* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1201 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1202 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1203
2bda9cc5
JK
1204* New options
1205
45cfd468
DE
1206set debug dwarf2-read
1207show debug dwarf2-read
1208 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1209 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1210
1211set debug symtab-create
1212show debug symtab-create
1213 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1214 creation. The default is off.
1215
baacfb07
PM
1216set extended-prompt
1217show extended-prompt
1218 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1219 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1220 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1221 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1222 prompt is displayed.
1223
2bda9cc5
JK
1224set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1225show print entry-values
1226 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1227 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1228 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1229
1230set debug entry-values
1231show debug entry-values
1232 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1233 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1234
c011a4f4
DE
1235set basenames-may-differ
1236show basenames-may-differ
1237 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1238 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1239 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1240 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1241 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1242 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1243 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1244 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1245
f196051f
SS
1246set trace-user
1247show trace-user
1248set trace-notes
1249show trace-notes
1250 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1251 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1252 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1253 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1254
1255set trace-stop-notes
1256show trace-stop-notes
1257 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1258 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1259 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1260 started by someone else.
1261
d248b706
KY
1262* New remote packets
1263
1264QTEnable
1265
1266 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1267
1268QTDisable
1269
1270 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1271
f196051f
SS
1272QTNotes
1273
1274 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1275
1276qTP
1277
1278 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1279
405f8e94
SS
1280qTMinFTPILen
1281
1282 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1283 be placed.
1284
1a532630
PP
1285* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1286 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1287
11315641
YQ
1288* New targets
1289
1290Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1291
87326c78
DD
1292* New Simulators
1293
1294Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1295
e8d56f18
JB
1296*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1297
1298* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1299
d6e00af6 1300*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1301
60f98dde
MS
1302* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1303 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1304 matches the given regular expression.
1305
eee5b35e
DD
1306* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1307
b716877b
AB
1308* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1309 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1310
aae1c79a
DE
1311* New command line options
1312
1313-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1314 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1315
a86caf66
DE
1316* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1317 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1318
99e7ae30
DE
1319* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1320 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1321 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1322
4694da01
TT
1323* GDB now understands thread names.
1324
1325 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1326 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1327
1328 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1329 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1330
f4b8a18d
KW
1331* OpenCL C
1332 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1333 has been integrated into GDB.
1334
585d1eb8
PM
1335* Python scripting
1336
da5d4055
PM
1337 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1338 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1339 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1340
9a6f1302
PM
1341 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1342 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1343 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1344 and allows for more dynamic content.
1345
29703da4
PM
1346 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1347 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1348 have an is_valid method.
1349
350c6c65
PM
1350 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1351 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1352 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1353
6e6fbe60
DE
1354 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1355
585d1eb8
PM
1356 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1357 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1358 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1359 that function like so:
1360
1361 result = some_value (10,20)
1362
0e3509db
DE
1363 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1364 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1365 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1366
7b51bc51
DE
1367 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1368 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1369 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1370 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1371 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1372
1373 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1374 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1375
99e7ae30
DE
1376 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1377
d8e22779
TT
1378 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1379 selected thread.
1380
4694da01
TT
1381 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1382 holds the thread's name.
1383
505500db
SW
1384 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1385 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1386 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1387 The following events are currently supported:
1388 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1389 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1390 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1391
def98928
TT
1392* C++ Improvements:
1393
1394 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1395 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1396
1397 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1398
1399 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1400 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1401 was added to GCC 4.5.
1402
66cb8159
TT
1403 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1404 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1405 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1406 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1407 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1408 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1409
4aac0db7
UW
1410* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1411 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1412 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1413 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1414 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1415
283e6a52
TT
1416* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1417 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1418 execution to a label.
1419
1420* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1421 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1422 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1423 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1424
b56df873 1425* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1426 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1427 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1428 of scope.
1429
ae53ffa4
PA
1430* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1431
1432 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1433 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1434 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1435 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1436 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1437 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1438
1439 (gdb) info threads
1440 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1441
1442 While now you see this:
1443
1444 (gdb) info threads
1445 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1446
1447 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1448 dumps.
1449
1450 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1451 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1452 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1453 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1454
f1310107
TJB
1455* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1456 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1457 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1458 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1459 section in the user manual for more details.
1460
248c9dbc
JB
1461* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1462
1aee7009
JB
1463 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1464 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1465
eb826dc6
MF
1466 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1467
44603653
JB
1468* New native configurations
1469
1470ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1471
91021223
MF
1472* New targets:
1473
1474Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1475
6e1bb179
JB
1476* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1477 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1478 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1479 in the GDB user manual.
1480
50c97f38
TT
1481* Guile support was removed.
1482
448a92bf
MF
1483* New features in the GNU simulator
1484
1485 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1486
66ee2731
MF
1487 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1488
76b8507d 1489*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1490
ba25b921
PA
1491* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1492
1493 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1494 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1495 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1496 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1497 was always disabled for such configurations.
1498
4656f5c6
SW
1499* C++ Improvements:
1500
1501 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1502
1503 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1504 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1505 For example:
1506 namespace A
1507 {
1508 class B { };
1509 void foo (B) { }
1510 }
1511 ...
1512 A::B b
1513 foo(b)
1514 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1515 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1516 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1517
1518 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1519
1520 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1521 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1522 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1523 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1524 entry.
1525 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1526 mentioned flavors of operators.
1527
254e6b9e
DE
1528 ** static const class members
1529
1530 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1531 class definition has been fixed.
1532
711e434b
PM
1533* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1534
1535 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1536 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1537 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1538 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1539 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1540 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1541
0fb4aa4b
PA
1542* Static tracepoints
1543
1544 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1545 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1546 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1547 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1548 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1549 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1550 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1551 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1552 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1553 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1554 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1555 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1556 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1557 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1558 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1559 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1560 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1561 the "New remote packets" section below.
1562
ca11e899
SS
1563* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1564
1565 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1566 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1567 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1568 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1569
1570* Observer mode
1571
1572 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1573 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1574 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1575 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1576 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1577 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1578 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1579
1580* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1581 current thread.
1582
711e434b
PM
1583* New remote packets
1584
1585qGetTIBAddr
1586
1587 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1588
dde08ee1
PA
1589qRelocInsn
1590
1591 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1592 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1593 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1594 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1595 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1596 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1597
0fb4aa4b
PA
1598qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1599
1600 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1601
1602qTSTMat
1603
1604 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1605 program.
1606
1607qXfer:statictrace:read
1608
1609 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1610 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1611 to gdb's qSupported query.
1612
ca11e899
SS
1613QAllow
1614
1615 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1616
1617QTDPsrc
1618
1619 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1620 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1621
3f7b2faa
DE
1622* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1623 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1624 a directory.
1625
d337e9f0
PA
1626* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1627
0fb4aa4b
PA
1628 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1629 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1630 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1631 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1632
1633 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1634 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1635 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1636 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1637 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1638 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1639 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1640
1641 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1642 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1643
c24d0242
PM
1644 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1645
c8d5aac9
L
1646* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1647 it understands register description.
1648
7c953934
TT
1649* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1650
8685c86f
L
1651* X86 general purpose registers
1652
1653 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1654 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1655 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1656 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1657 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1658
95a42b64 1659* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1660 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1661 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1662 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1663 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1664 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1665
8bd10a10
CM
1666* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1667 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1668 in the specified file.
1669
ab38a727
PA
1670* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1671 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1672 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1673 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1674 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1675 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1676 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1677 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1678 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1679 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1680
6149aea9
PA
1681* New commands
1682
f1421989
HZ
1683eval template, expressions...
1684 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1685 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1686
ab38a727
PA
1687set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1688show target-file-system-kind
1689 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1690 names.
1691
6149aea9
PA
1692save breakpoints <filename>
1693 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1694 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1695 definitions, use the `source' command.
1696
1697`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1698is now deprecated.
1699
0fb4aa4b
PA
1700info static-tracepoint-markers
1701 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1702
1703strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1704 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1705 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1706
ca11e899
SS
1707set observer on|off
1708show observer
1709 Enable and disable observer mode.
1710
1711set may-write-registers on|off
1712set may-write-memory on|off
1713set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1714set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1715set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1716set may-interrupt on|off
1717 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1718 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1719 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1720 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1721 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1722 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1723 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1724
1725set record memory-query on|off
1726show record memory-query
1727 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1728 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1729
53a71c06
CR
1730* Changed commands
1731
1732disassemble
1733 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1734
f3e9a817
PM
1735* Python scripting
1736
9279c692
JB
1737** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1738 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1739 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1740 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1741 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1742
adc36818 1743** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1744 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1745 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1746 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1747
fa33c3cd 1748** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1749 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1750
1751** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1752
1753** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1754
967cf477
DE
1755** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1756
8a1ea21f
DE
1757** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1758 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1759 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1760
a7bdde9e
VP
1761* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1762there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1763tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1764regular breakpoints.
1765
05071a4d
PA
1766* New targets
1767
1768ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1769
6aecb9c2
JB
1770* D language support.
1771 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1772 language.
1773
431e49aa
TJB
1774* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1775 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1776 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1777 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1778 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1779
1780* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1781 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1782 conditions of the form:
1783
1784 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1785
1786 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1787 interface mentioned above.
1788
bfbf3774 1789*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1790
4eef138c
TT
1791* C++ Improvements
1792
1793 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1794
1795 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1796 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1797 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1798 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1799 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1800
4eef138c
TT
1801 ** Bug Fixes
1802
1803 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1804 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1805 qualified name.
1806
1807 ** Cast Operators
1808
1809 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1810 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1811
2d1c1221
ME
1812* New targets
1813
1814Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1815Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1816
1817* New Simulators
1818
1819Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1820Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1821
6c95b8df
PA
1822* Multi-program debugging.
1823
1824 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1825 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1826 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1827 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1828 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1829 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1830 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1831 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1832
d5551862
SS
1833* New tracing features
1834
1835 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1836
1837 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1838
1839 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1840 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1841 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1842 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1843 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1844 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1845 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1846 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1847 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1848 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1849
d5551862 1850 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1851
1852 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1853 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1854 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1855 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1856 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1857 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1858 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1859 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1860 the regular trace command.
1861
d5551862
SS
1862 ** Disconnected tracing
1863
1864 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1865 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1866 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1867 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1868 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1869
00bf0b85
SS
1870 ** Trace files
1871
1872 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1873 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1874 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1875 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1876 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1877 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1878 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1879
1880 ** Circular trace buffer
1881
1882 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1883 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1884 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1885 not be available for all target agents.
1886
21a0512e
PP
1887* Changed commands
1888
1889disassemble
1890 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1891 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1892
0fe7935b
DJ
1893info variables
1894 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1895 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1896
fb2e7cb4
JB
1897source
1898 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1899 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1900 support.
1901
1902 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1903 "set script-extension" (see below).
1904
6c95b8df
PA
1905* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1906
399cd161
MS
1907record save [<FILENAME>]
1908 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1909 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1910
1911record restore <FILENAME>
1912 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1913 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1914
6c95b8df
PA
1915add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1916 Add a new inferior.
1917
1918clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1919 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1920 inferior has loaded.
1921
1922remove-inferior ID
1923 Remove an inferior.
1924
1925maint info program-spaces
1926 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1927
9a7071a8
JB
1928set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1929show remote interrupt-sequence
1930 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1931 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1932 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1933 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1934 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1935
1936set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1937show remote interrupt-on-connect
1938 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1939 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1940 Linux kernel.
1941
1942set remotebreak [on | off]
1943show remotebreak
1944Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1945
f61e138d
SS
1946tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1947 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1948
1949info tvariables
1950 List trace state variables and their values.
1951
1952delete tvariable $NAME ...
1953 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1954
6da95a67
SS
1955teval EXPR, ...
1956 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1957 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1958
7a697b8d
SS
1959ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1960 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1961
b0f02ee9
JK
1962* New expression syntax
1963
1964 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1965 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1966
6c95b8df
PA
1967* New options
1968
1969set follow-exec-mode new|same
1970show follow-exec-mode
1971 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1972 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1973 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1974
236f1d4d
SS
1975set default-collect EXPR, ...
1976show default-collect
1977 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1978 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1979 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1980
d5551862
SS
1981set disconnected-tracing
1982show disconnected-tracing
1983 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1984 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1985 upon disconnection.
1986
4daf5ac0
SS
1987set circular-trace-buffer
1988show circular-trace-buffer
1989 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1990 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1991 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1992 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1993
fb2e7cb4
JB
1994set script-extension off|soft|strict
1995show script-extension
1996 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1997 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1998 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1999 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2000 evaluation failed.
2001 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2002
2b71fc8e
JB
2003set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2004show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2005 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2006 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2007 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2008 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2009 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2010 is on.
2011
de2e5182
TT
2012* Python API Improvements
2013
2014 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2015 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2016 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2017
2018 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2019 `is_base_class' attribute.
2020
2021 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2022
2023 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2024 evaluate an expression.
2025
f61e138d
SS
2026* New remote packets
2027
2028QTDV
2029 Define a trace state variable.
2030
2031qTV
2032 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2033
d5551862
SS
2034QTDisconnected
2035 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2036
4daf5ac0
SS
2037QTBuffer:circular
2038 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2039
d5551862
SS
2040qTfP, qTsP
2041 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2042
2d483d34
MS
2043* Bug fixes
2044
2045Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2046
6e0e5977
JB
2047Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2048much more reliable. In particular:
2049 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2050 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2051 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2052 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2053 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2054 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2055 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2056 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2057 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2058 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2059 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2060 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2061 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2062 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2063 non-threaded programs.
2064
93c26624
JK
2065PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2066This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2067libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2068executable program.
2069
abc7453d 2070*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2071
4efc6507
DE
2072* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2073dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2074them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2075for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2076"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2077
782b2b07
SS
2078* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2079breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2080or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2081the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2082for tracepoint actions.
2083
53a71c06
CR
2084* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2085raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2086modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2087
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2088* Process record and replay
2089
2090 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2091 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2092 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2093 execute commands.
2094
64644d9b
MS
2095* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2096step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2097set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2098reverse execution.
2099
b9412953
DD
2100* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2101feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
21022.6.28 or later.
2103
6c7a06a3
TT
2104* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2105target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2106char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2107literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2108U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2109`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2110system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2111the installation instructions for more information.
2112
f1838a98
UW
2113* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2114remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2115with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2116the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2117
55333a84
DE
2118* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2119and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2120
7f6a6314
PM
2121* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2122now complete on file names.
2123
65d12d83
TT
2124* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2125completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2126For instance, consider:
2127
2128 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2129 # struct example variable;
2130 (gdb) p variable.
2131
2132If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2133completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2134
edb3359d
DJ
2135* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2136the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2137
2fae03e8
TT
2138* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2139operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2140macros.
2141
47a3467a 2142* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2143the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2144implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2145
2146* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2147registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2148can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2149and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2150
08388c79
DE
2151* New remote packets
2152
2153qSearch:memory:
2154 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2155
a6f3e723
SL
2156QStartNoAckMode
2157 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2158 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2159 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2160
d7713ae0
EZ
2161vKill
2162 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2163 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2164
07e059b5
VP
2165qXfer:osdata:read
2166 Obtains additional operating system information
2167
47a3467a
PA
2168qXfer:siginfo:read
2169qXfer:siginfo:write
2170 Read or write additional signal information.
2171
060871df
PA
2172* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2173
2174 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2175 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2176 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2177
c055b101 2178* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2179DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2180
2181* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2182and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2183`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2184
31fffb02
CS
2185* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2186with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2187
88d8a8e0
JB
2188* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2189
7f99b190
JB
2190* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2191
ccd213ac
DJ
2192* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2193which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2194
1fddbabb 2195* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2196list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2197
a0ef4274
DJ
2198* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2199conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2200have also been fixed.
2201
bfb8797a 2202* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2203From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2204are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2205
71c25dea
TT
2206* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2207example, given:
2208
2209 template<typename T> class C { };
2210 C<char const *> c;
2211
2212GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2213
2214 ptype C<char const *>
2215 ptype C<char const*>
2216 ptype C<const char *>
2217 ptype C<const char*>
2218
ccd213ac
DJ
2219* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2220
2221 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2222 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2223
7ae0e2a2
UW
2224 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2225 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2226 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2227
a6f3e723
SL
2228 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2229 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2230
da8bd9a3
DJ
2231 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2232 gdbserver.
2233
d70e31dd
DE
2234 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2235 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2236
2237 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2238 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2239 as appropriate.
2240
d57a3c85
TJB
2241* Python scripting
2242
2243 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2244 available is determined at configure time.
2245
d8906c6f
TJB
2246 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2247
aadc346a
JB
2248* Ada tasking support
2249
2250 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2251 been introduced:
2252
2253 info tasks
2254 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2255 info task N
2256 Print detailed information about task number N.
2257 task
2258 Print the task number of the current task.
2259 task N
2260 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2261
adb483fe
DJ
2262* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2263add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2264
2277426b
PA
2265* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2266
2267 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2268 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2269 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2270 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2271 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2272 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2273 below.
2274
08d16641
PA
2275* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2276"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2277information.
2278
e35359c5
UW
2279* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2280to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2281architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2282See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2283more information.
2284
85e747d2
UW
2285* Multi-architecture debugging.
2286
2287 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2288 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2289 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2290 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2291 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2292
2293* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2294use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2295Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2296powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2297--enable-targets configure option.
2298
11ade57a
PA
2299* Non-stop mode debugging.
2300
2301 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2302 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2303 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2304 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2305 section in the user manual for more information.
2306
2307 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2308 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2309 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2310 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2311 extensions on linux targets.
2312
d7713ae0 2313* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2314
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2315catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2316 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2317 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2318 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2319 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2320 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2321 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2322 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2323 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2324
08388c79
DE
2325find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2326 val1 [, val2, ...]
2327 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2328
d57a3c85
TJB
2329maint set python print-stack
2330maint show python print-stack
2331 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2332
2333python [CODE]
2334 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2335
d7713ae0
EZ
2336macro define
2337macro list
2338macro undef
2339 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2340 interactively.
2341
2342info os processes
2343 Show operating system information about processes.
2344
2277426b
PA
2345info inferiors
2346 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2347
2348inferior NUM
2349 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2350
2351detach inferior NUM
2352 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2353
2354kill inferior NUM
2355 Kill inferior number NUM.
2356
d7713ae0
EZ
2357* New options
2358
3285f3fe
UW
2359set spu stop-on-load
2360show spu stop-on-load
2361 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2362
ff1a52c6
UW
2363set spu auto-flush-cache
2364show spu auto-flush-cache
2365 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2366 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2367
d7713ae0
EZ
2368set sh calling-convention
2369show sh calling-convention
2370 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2371
e0a3ce09 2372set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2373show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2374 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2375
2376set disassemble-next-line
2377show disassemble-next-line
2378 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2379 the debuggee stops.
2380
2381set remote noack-packet
2382show remote noack-packet
2383 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2384 under "New remote packets."
2385
2386set remote query-attached-packet
2387show remote query-attached-packet
2388 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2389
2390set remote read-siginfo-object
2391show remote read-siginfo-object
2392 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2393 packet.
2394
2395set remote write-siginfo-object
2396show remote write-siginfo-object
2397 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2398 packet.
2399
40ab02ce
MS
2400set remote reverse-continue
2401show remote reverse-continue
2402 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2403
2404set remote reverse-step
2405show remote reverse-step
2406 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2407
d7713ae0
EZ
2408set displaced-stepping
2409show displaced-stepping
2410 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2411 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2412 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2413
2414set debug displaced
2415show debug displaced
2416 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2417
2418maint set internal-error
2419maint show internal-error
2420 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2421
2422maint set internal-warning
2423maint show internal-warning
2424 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2425
ccd213ac
DJ
2426set exec-wrapper
2427show exec-wrapper
2428unset exec-wrapper
2429 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2430
aad4b048
JB
2431set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2432show multiple-symbols
2433 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2434 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2435 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2436
74960c60
VP
2437set breakpoint always-inserted
2438show breakpoint always-inserted
2439 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2440 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2441 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2442
0428b8f5
DJ
2443set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2444show arm fallback-mode
2445set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2446show arm force-mode
2447 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2448 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2449 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2450 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2451
10568435
JK
2452set disable-randomization
2453show disable-randomization
2454 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2455 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2456 multiple debugging sessions.
2457
d7713ae0
EZ
2458set non-stop
2459show non-stop
2460 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2461 a breakpoint.
2462
b3eb342c 2463set target-async
d7713ae0 2464show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2465 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2466 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2467 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2468 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2469
6c7a06a3
TT
2470set target-wide-charset
2471show target-wide-charset
2472 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2473 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2474
84603566
SL
2475set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2476show tcp auto-retry
2477set tcp connect-timeout
2478show tcp connect-timeout
2479 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2480 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2481 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2482
17a37d48
PP
2483set libthread-db-search-path
2484show libthread-db-search-path
2485 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2486 libthread_db.
2487
d4db2f36
PA
2488set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2489show schedule-multiple
2490 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2491 the current process.
2492
4e5d721f
DE
2493set stack-cache
2494show stack-cache
2495 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2496 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2497 affecting correctness.
2498
910c5da8
JB
2499set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2500show interactive-mode
2501 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2502 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2503 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2504 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2505 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2506
2277426b
PA
2507* Removed commands
2508
2509info forks
2510 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2511 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2512 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2513 command.
2514
2515fork NUM
2516 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2517 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2518 alias for the `fork' command.
2519
2520process PID
2521 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2522 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2523 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2524
2525delete fork NUM
2526 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2527 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2528 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2529 fork' command.
2530
2531detach fork NUM
2532 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2533 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2534 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2535 fork' command.
2536
a80b95ba
TG
2537* New native configurations
2538
2539x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2540
b8bfd3ed
JB
2541x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2542
75a2d5e7
TT
2543* New targets
2544
c28c63d8 2545Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2546x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2547x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2548S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2549
6de3146c
PA
2550* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2551 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2552
d5cbbe6e
JB
2553* Removed commands
2554
2555catch load
2556catch unload
2557 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2558
75feb17d 2559*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2560
af5ca30d
NH
2561* New native configurations
2562
2563NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2564Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2565
2566* New targets
2567
2568NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2569Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2570
7a404eba
PA
2571* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2572
2573 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2574 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2575 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2576 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2577
430ebac9
PA
2578* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2579(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2580
fe6fbf8b 2581* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2582is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2583
2584* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2585including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2586and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2587
10665d76
JB
2588* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2589accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2590more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2591
7cc46491
DJ
2592* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2593
d71340b8
DJ
2594* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2595registers on PowerPC targets.
2596
523c4513
DJ
2597* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2598targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2599
a6b151f1
DJ
2600* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2601commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2602
2d717e4f
DJ
2603* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2604extended-remote mode.
2605
24a836bd 2606* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2607The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2608error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2609The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2610
d0c678e6
UW
2611* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2612building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2613target architectures.
2614
d64a946d
TJB
2615* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2616Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2617now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2618stored in two consecutive float registers.
2619
ee163bf5
VP
2620* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2621breakpoints now.
2622
b93b6ca7 2623* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2624Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2625include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2626 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2627 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2628 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2629 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2630 of an assignment
2631 - Improved command completion in Ada
2632 - Several bug fixes
2633
d001be7a
DJ
2634* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2635process.
2636
a6b151f1
DJ
2637* New commands
2638
6d53d0af
JB
2639set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2640show print frame-arguments
2641 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2642 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2643
a6b151f1
DJ
2644remote put
2645remote get
2646remote delete
2647 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2648
2649* New MI commands
2650
2651-target-file-put
2652-target-file-get
2653-target-file-delete
2654 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2655
2656* New remote packets
2657
2658vFile:open:
2659vFile:close:
2660vFile:pread:
2661vFile:pwrite:
2662vFile:unlink:
2663 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2664
2d717e4f
DJ
2665vAttach
2666 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2667 mode.
2668
2669vRun
2670 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2671
8d5f9c6f 2672*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2673
19d378fc
MS
2674* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2675bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2676Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2677
3a40aaa0
UW
2678* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2679symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2680-Bsymbolic linker option.
2681
a6ec25f2
BW
2682* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2683recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2684is not supported.
2685
6dd09645
JB
2686* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2687frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2688
c9bb8148
DJ
2689* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
269032-bit or 64-bit register values.
2691
0d5de010
DJ
2692* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2693
23181151
DJ
2694* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2695target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2696a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2697
ea37ba09
DJ
2698* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2699automatically displayed as character or string data.
2700
2701* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2702arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2703as strings.
e1f48ead 2704
123dc839
DJ
2705* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2706for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2707only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2708
05a4558a
DJ
2709* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2710iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2711
7c963485
PA
2712* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2713ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2714has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2715
b18be20d
DJ
2716* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2717
0ca420ce
UW
2718* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2719
31d99776
DJ
2720* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2721layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2722segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2723
a4642986
MR
2724* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2725immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2726
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2727* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2728"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2729packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2730where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2731Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2732
2733* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2734(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2735
2736* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2737according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2738
c9bb8148
DJ
2739* New commands
2740
23776285
MR
2741set remoteflow
2742show remoteflow
2743 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2744 when debugging using remote targets.
2745
c9bb8148
DJ
2746set mem inaccessible-by-default
2747show mem inaccessible-by-default
2748 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2749 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2750 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2751 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2752 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2753
2754set breakpoint auto-hw
2755show breakpoint auto-hw
2756 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2757 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2758 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2759 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2760 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2761 including "next" and "finish".
2762
0e420bd8
JB
2763catch exception
2764catch exception unhandled
2765 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2766
2767catch assert
2768 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2769
f822c95b
DJ
2770set sysroot
2771show sysroot
2772 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2773 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2774 an alias to "set sysroot".
2775
83cc5c53
UW
2776info spu
2777 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2778 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2779 architecture.
2780
bd372731
MK
2781* New native configurations
2782
2783OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2784
23181151
DJ
2785set tdesc filename
2786unset tdesc filename
2787show tdesc filename
2788 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2789 not query the target for its built-in description.
2790
c9bb8148
DJ
2791* New targets
2792
54fe9172 2793OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2794MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2795Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2796
6dd09645
JB
2797* New remote packets
2798
2799QPassSignals:
2800 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2801 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2802
23181151
DJ
2803qXfer:features:read:
2804 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2805 features.
6dd09645 2806
83cc5c53
UW
2807qXfer:spu:read:
2808qXfer:spu:write:
2809 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2810 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2811
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2812qXfer:libraries:read:
2813 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2814 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2815 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2816 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2817
483367ee
DJ
2818* Removed targets
2819
2820Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2821
d08950c4
UW
2822alpha*-*-osf1*
2823alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2824d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2825hppa*-*-hiux*
2826i[34567]86-ncr-*
2827i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2828i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2829i[34567]86-*-netware*
2830i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2831i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2832i[34567]86-*-sco*
2833i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2834i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2835i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2836i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2837i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2838i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2839i[34567]86-*-isc*
2840m68*-cisco*-*
2841m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2842mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2843rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2844sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2845
7ce59000
DJ
2846* Other removed features
2847
2848target abug
2849target cpu32bug
2850target est
2851target rom68k
2852
2853 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2854
ea35711c
DJ
2855target hms
2856target e7000
2857target sh3
2858target sh3e
2859
2860 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2861 H8/300.
2862
2863target ocd
2864
2865 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2866 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2867 interfaces.
2868
7ce59000
DJ
2869DWARF 1 support
2870
2871 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2872 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2873
54d61198
DJ
2874Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2875
2876 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2877 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2878 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2879 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2880
ea35711c
DJ
2881MIPS ".pdr" sections
2882
2883 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2884 in debugging information.
2885
2886Scheme support
2887
2888 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2889 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2890
1a69e1e4
DJ
2891set mips stack-arg-size
2892set mips saved-gpreg-size
2893
2894 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2895
6dd09645 2896*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2897
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2898* New targets
2899
2900Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2901Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2902
6aec2e11
DJ
2903* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2904(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2905running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2906
2907* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2908Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2909supported.
2910
17218d91
DJ
2911* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2912broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2913
9ebce043
DJ
2914* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2915stub provides the required support.
2916
7d3d3ece
DJ
2917* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2918longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2919
4f8253f3
JB
2920* New commands
2921
2922set substitute-path
2923unset substitute-path
2924show substitute-path
2925 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2926 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2927 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2928 between compilation and debugging.
2929
9fa66fd7
AS
2930set trace-commands
2931show trace-commands
2932 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2933 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2934 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2935
1f5befc1
DJ
2936* REMOVED features
2937
2938The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2939
2ec3381a
DJ
2940Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2941an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2942
3d00d119
DJ
2943The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2944
be2a5f71
DJ
2945* New remote packets
2946
2947qSupported:
2948 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2949 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2950 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2951 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2952 target.
2953
0876f84a
DJ
2954qXfer:auxv:read:
2955 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2956 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2957
9ebce043
DJ
2958qXfer:memory-map:read:
2959 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2960 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2961
2962vFlashErase:
2963vFlashWrite:
2964vFlashDone:
2965 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2966
0876f84a
DJ
2967* Removed remote packets
2968
2969qPart:auxv:read:
2970 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2971 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2972
e374b601 2973*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2974
96309189
MS
2975* New targets
2976
2977Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2978
2979Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2980
53e5f3cf
AS
2981* New commands
2982
2983init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2984 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2985
ac264b3b
MS
2986The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2987
2988checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2989
2990restart <n> Return the program state to a
2991 previously saved state.
2992
2993info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2994
2995delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2996
2997set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2998 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2999
3000info forks List forks of the user program that
3001 are available to be debugged.
3002
3003fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3004 forks of the user program that are
3005 available to be debugged.
3006
3007delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3008 that are available to be debugged (and
3009 kill the forked process).
3010
3011detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3012 that are available to be debugged (and
3013 allow the process to continue).
3014
3950dc3f
NS
3015* New architecture
3016
3017Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3018
0ea3f30e
DJ
3019* Improved Windows host support
3020
3021GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3022native console support, and remote communications using either
3023network sockets or serial ports.
3024
f79daebb
GM
3025* Improved Modula-2 language support
3026
3027GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3028basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3029pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3030printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3031written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3032GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3033
acab6ab2
MM
3034* REMOVED features
3035
3036The ARM rdi-share module.
3037
f4267320
DJ
3038The Netware NLM debug server.
3039
53e5f3cf 3040*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3041
e0ecbda1
MK
3042* New native configurations
3043
02a677ac 3044OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3045OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3046
d64a6579
KB
3047* New targets
3048
3049Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3050
b33a6190
AS
3051* New command line options
3052
3053--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3054--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3055 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3056--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3057 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3058 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3059 with the --command (-x) option.
3060
11dced61
AC
3061* Deprecated commands removed
3062
3063The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3064removed:
3065
3066 Command Replacement
3067 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3068 othernames set arm disassembler
3069 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3070 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3071 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3072 regs info registers
3073
6fe85783
MK
3074* New BSD user-level threads support
3075
3076It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3077library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3078configurations are:
3079
3080FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3081FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3082OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3083
3084Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3085are not yet supported.
3086
5260ca71
MS
3087* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3088(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3089
e84ecc99
AC
3090* REMOVED configurations and files
3091
3092VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3093Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3094National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3095
31e35378
JB
3096* New "set print array-indexes" command
3097
3098After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3099when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3100behavior.
3101
e85e5c83
MK
3102* VAX floating point support
3103
3104GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3105
d91e9901
AS
3106* User-defined command support
3107
3108In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3109to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3110section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3111
f2cb65ca
MC
3112*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3113
f47b1503
AS
3114* New command line option
3115
3116GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3117debugging.
3118
f2cb65ca
MC
3119* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3120
3121GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3122information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3123by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3124proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3125to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3126
d08c0230
AC
3127* Internationalization
3128
3129When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3130internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3131continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3132
117ea3cf
PH
3133* Ada
3134
3135Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3136implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3137into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3138
d08c0230
AC
3139* New native configurations
3140
3141GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3142
3143* Remote 'p' packet
3144
3145GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3146packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3147
3148* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3149
3150GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3151The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3152features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3153i386 application).
3154
3155GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3156compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3157continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3158configurations:
3159
3160hppa-*-hpux
3161ia64-*-aix
3162mips-*-irix*
3163*-*-lynx
3164mips-*-linux-gnu
3165sds protocol
3166xdr protocol
3167powerpc bdm protocol
3168
3169Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3170made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3171
3172* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3173
3174Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3175been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3176configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3177permanently REMOVED.
3178
3179h8300-*-*
3180mcore-*-*
3181mn10300-*-*
3182ns32k-*-*
3183sh64-*-*
3184v850-*-*
3185
ebb7c577
AC
3186*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3187
3188* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3189
3190When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3191heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3192been fixed.
3193
3194* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3195
3196When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3197fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3198IRIX long double values).
3199
3200* VAX and "next"
3201
3202A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3203command. This problem has been fixed.
3204
860660cb 3205*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3206
0dea2468
AC
3207* Fix for ``many threads''
3208
3209On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3210rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3211error message:
3212
3213 ptrace: No such process.
3214 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3215
3216This problem has been fixed.
3217
2c07db7a
AC
3218* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3219
3220Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3221GDB to dump core).
3222
c23968a2
JB
3223* New ``start'' command.
3224
3225This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3226
71009278
MK
3227* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3228
3229Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3230live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3231platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3232
3233FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3234FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3235NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3236NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3237NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3238OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3239OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3240OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3241OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3242
3c0b7db2
AC
3243* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3244
3245Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3246These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3247of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3248call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3249signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3250
73cc75f3
AC
3251Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3252features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3253include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3254
7243600a
BF
3255* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3256
6f606e1c
MK
3257* New native configurations
3258
97dc871c 3259GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3260OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3261OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3262OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3263OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3264NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3265OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3266
a1b461bf
AC
3267* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3268
3269GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3270The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3271including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3272migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3273compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3274work, was also included.
3275
3276GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3277module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3278
3279h8300-*-*
3280mcore-*-*
3281mn10300-*-*
3282ns32k-*-*
3283sh64-*-*
3284v850-*-*
3285xstormy16-*-*
3286
3287Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3288made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3289
3c7012f5
AC
3290* REMOVED configurations and files
3291
3292Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3293Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3294Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3295Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3296Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3297AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3298Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3299decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3300riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3301sonymips mips-sony-*
3302sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3303
e5fe55f7
AC
3304*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3305
3306* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3307
3308The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3309GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3310command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3311program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3312with GDB".
3313
3314* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3315
3316Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3317libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3318cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3319GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3320shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3321the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3322are created.
3323
3324Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3325
3326* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3327
3328The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3329non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3330compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3331
3332* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3333
3334Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3335wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3336
3337* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3338
3339The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3340permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3341systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3342
3343* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3344
3345Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3346has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3347
3348* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3349
3350GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3351its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3352panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3353
3354* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3355
3356When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3357by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3358not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3359
faae5abe 3360*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3361
9175c9a3
MC
3362* Removed --with-mmalloc
3363
3364Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3365conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3366
3cc87ec0
MK
3367* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3368
3369The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3370the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3371and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3372you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3373
f0424ef6
MK
3374* Revised SPARC target
3375
3376The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3377FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3378support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3379from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3380(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3381
59659be2
ILT
3382* New C++ demangler
3383
3384GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3385names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3386with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3387programs.
3388
9e08b29b
DJ
3389* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3390
3391GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3392arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3393encountered these.
3394
8dfe8985
DC
3395* C++ nested types and namespaces
3396
3397GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3398improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3399is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3400Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3401namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3402"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3403frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3404if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3405GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3406
cced5e27
MK
3407* New native configurations
3408
3409NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3410OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3411OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3412OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3413OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3414
b4b4b794
KI
3415* New debugging protocols
3416
3417M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3418
7989c619
AC
3419* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3420
3421The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3422and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3423tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3424
5994185b
AC
3425* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3426
3427Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3428been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3429configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3430permanently REMOVED.
3431
3432Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3433Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3434Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3435Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3436Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3437AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3438Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3439decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3440riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3441sonymips mips-sony-*
3442sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3443
0ddabb4c
AC
3444* REMOVED configurations and files
3445
3446SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3447SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3448Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3449Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3450H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3451HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3452HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3453HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3454PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3455386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3456Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3457 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3458 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3459SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3460SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3461Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3462Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3463
c7f1390e
DJ
3464*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3465
1fe43d45
AC
3466* Objective-C
3467
3468Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3469integrated into GDB.
3470
e6beb428
AC
3471* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3472
3473DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3474information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3475By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3476backtraces.
3477
3478The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3479have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3480DWARF 2 CFI support.
3481
3482* Hosted file I/O.
3483
3484GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3485file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3486remote protocol documentation for details.
3487
3488* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3489
3490All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3491architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3492to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3493ppc32 on ppc64).
3494
3495* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3496
3497GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3498per-thread variables.
3499
3500* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3501
3502GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3503GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3504
3505* Separate debug info.
3506
3507GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3508automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3509of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3510system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3511and optional debug files.
3512
3513* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3514
3515DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3516describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3517debugger.
3518
3519GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3520for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3521
3522* Java
3523
3524A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3525Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3526considered "useable".
3527
85f8f974
DJ
3528* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3529
3530The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3531commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3532kernel.
3533
0fac0b41
DJ
3534* GDB supports logging output to a file
3535
3536There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3537used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3538
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3539* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3540
3541The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3542disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3543command.
3544
e286caf2 3545* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3546
3547The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3548registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3549
d28f9cdf
DJ
3550* Profiling support
3551
3552A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3553be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3554session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3555"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3556data, for more informative profiling results.
3557
da0f9dcd
AC
3558* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3559
3560The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3561option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3562"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3563
3564Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3565removed.
3566
fb9b6b35
JJ
3567Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3568Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3569Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3570 in a subsequent -var-update.
3571
954a4db8
MK
3572* New native configurations.
3573
3574FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3575
6760f9e6
JB
3576* Multi-arched targets.
3577
b4263afa 3578HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3579Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3580
1b831c93
AC
3581* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3582
3583Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3584been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3585configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3586permanently REMOVED.
3587
8b0e5691 3588Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3589Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3590H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3591HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3592HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3593HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3594PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3595Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3596 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3597 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3598Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3599Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3600
5835abe7
NC
3601* REMOVED configurations and files
3602
3603V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3604Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3605IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3606i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3607i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3608i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3609HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3610 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3611 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3612Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3613Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3614Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3615OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3616I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3617
a094c6fb
AC
3618* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3619
3620The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3621the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3622context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3623address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3624The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3625
299ffc64 3626*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3627
46248966
AC
3628* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3629
3630When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3631`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3632in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3633library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3634shared libs like mad''.
3635
b9d14705 3636* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3637
b9d14705
DJ
3638Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3639the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3640arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3641powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3642
e0e9281e
JB
3643* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3644
3645GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3646and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3647they expand.
3648
dd73b9bb
AC
3649The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3650invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3651
3652The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3653macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3654
e0e9281e
JB
3655Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3656information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3657your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3658information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3659
2250ee0c
CV
3660* Multi-arched targets.
3661
6e3ba3b8
JT
3662DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3663DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3664NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3665National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3666Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3667Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3668
cd9bfe15 3669* New targets.
e33ce519 3670
456f8b9d
DB
3671Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3672
e33ce519 3673
da8ca43d
JT
3674* New native configurations
3675
3676Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3677SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3678MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3679UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3680
cd9bfe15
AC
3681* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3682
3683Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3684been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3685configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3686permanently REMOVED.
3687
92eb23c5 3688Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3689OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3690IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3691Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3692Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3693Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3694i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3695i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3696i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3697HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3698 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3699 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3700I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3701
db034ac5
AC
3702* OBSOLETE languages
3703
3704CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3705
cd9bfe15
AC
3706* REMOVED configurations and files
3707
3708AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3709A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3710AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3711AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3712AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3713
3714testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3715
20f01a46
DH
3716* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3717
3718This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3719commands. The default is 1024.
3720
a5941fbf
MK
3721* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3722
3723Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3724
89743e04
MS
3725* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3726
3727These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3728to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3729from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3730
9fb14e79
JB
3731* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3732
3733The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3734including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3735of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3736
2037aebb
AC
3737*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3738
3739* New targets.
3740
3741Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3742
3743* Bug fixes
3744
3745gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3746mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3747Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3748
3749gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3750dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3751Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3752
3753Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3754Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3755By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3756
3757i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3758avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3759By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3760
37057839 3761*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3762
1a703748
MS
3763* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3764
3765This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3766really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3767In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3768target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3769This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3770(notably embedded) targets.
3771
cefd4ef5
MS
3772* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3773
55241689
AC
3774This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3775process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3776GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3777hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3778
352ed7b4
MS
3779* New command line option
3780
3781GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3782
3783* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3784
3785There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3786command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3787a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3788be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3789open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3790issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3791a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3792it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3793GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3794is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3795
fe419ffc
RE
3796* Changes in ARM configurations.
3797
3798Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3799configuration is fully multi-arch.
3800
eb7cedd9
MK
3801* New native configurations
3802
fe419ffc 3803ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3804x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3805AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3806Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3807
c9f63e6b
CV
3808* New targets
3809
3810Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3811
9b4ff276
AC
3812* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3813
3814Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3815been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3816configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3817permanently REMOVED.
3818
3819AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3820A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3821AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3822AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3823AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3824
b4ceaee6 3825testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3826
e2caac18
AC
3827* REMOVED configurations and files
3828
3829TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3830WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3831PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3832PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3833PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3834Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3835Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3836 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3837SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3838Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3839Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3840ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3841Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3842
c2a727fa
TT
3843* Changes to command line processing
3844
3845The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3846for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3847
467d8519
TT
3848* Changes to key bindings
3849
3850There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3851
7072a954
AC
3852*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3853
3854Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3855
3856Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3857corrupted.
3858
3859Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3860
3861Numerous documentation fixes.
3862
3863Numerous testsuite fixes.
3864
34f47bc4 3865*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3866
3867* New native configurations
3868
3869Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3870x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3871MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3872MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3873ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3874s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3875
bf64bfd6
AC
3876* New targets
3877
def90278 3878Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3879CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3880UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3881
17e78a56 3882* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3883
3884x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3885Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3886Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3887 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3888TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3889WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3890Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3891PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3892PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3893PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3894SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3895Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3896ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3897Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3898
17e78a56
AC
3899stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3900kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3901
7fcca85b
AC
3902Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3903been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3904configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3905permanently REMOVED.
3906
a196c81c 3907* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3908
3909Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3910Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3911Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3912ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3913Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3914ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3915
6d6b80e5 3916* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3917
6d6b80e5 3918GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3919sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3920present.
3921
bf64bfd6
AC
3922* Other news:
3923
e23194cb
EZ
3924* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3925
3926* The MI enabled by default.
3927
3928The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3929revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3930engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3931using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3932which is now deprecated.
3933
3934* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3935
3936GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3937main features are supported:
3938
3939 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3940
3941 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3942 extension;
3943
3944 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3945
3946 - a Pascal expression parser.
3947
3948However, some important features are not yet supported.
3949
3950 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3951
3952 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3953
3954 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3955 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3956
3957 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3958
3959 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3960
3961* Changes in completion.
3962
3963Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3964to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3965users expect at the shell prompt.
3966
3967Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3968`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3969program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3970files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3971be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3972considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3973name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3974
3975`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3976
3977* New platform-independent commands:
3978
3979It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3980hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3981documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3982
3983* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3984
d7275149
MK
3985Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3986revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3987many threads as your system allows you to have.
3988
e23194cb
EZ
3989Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3990
d7275149
MK
3991Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3992multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3993
3994* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3995
3996Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3997
e23194cb
EZ
3998GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3999debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4000supported.)
4001
4002* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4003
4004Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4005breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4006implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4007put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4008and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4009registers.
4010
4011The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4012debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4013watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4014
4015* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4016
4017New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4018the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4019
4020New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4021display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4022IDT.
4023
4024New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4025from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4026New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4027a given linear address.
4028
4029GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4030program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4031which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4032
4033DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4034
6c56c069
EZ
4035It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4036
e23194cb
EZ
4037* Changes in documentation.
4038
4039All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4040Documentation License.
4041
4042Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4043manual.
4044
4045TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4046
4047Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4048manual.
4049
4050The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4051documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4052hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4053
5d6640b1
AC
4054* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4055
4056The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4057``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4058contents of this file.
4059
1a1d8446
AC
4060* gdba.el deleted
4061
4062GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4063
9debab2f 4064*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4065
c63ce875
EZ
4066* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4067
4068Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4069programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4070displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4071greater level of detail.
4072
4073* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4074
4075It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4076bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4077on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4078written.
4079
4080* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4081
4082The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4083necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4084machines ``out of the box''.
4085
4086The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4087possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4088signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4089would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4090interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4091
4092It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4093standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4094even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4095and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4096terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4097
4098The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4099enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4100also works.
4101
4102DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4103GDB.
4104
4105It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4106directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4107times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4108breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4109
ed9a39eb
JM
4110* New native configurations
4111
4112ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4113PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4114
7a292a7a
SS
4115* New targets
4116
96baa820 4117Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4118x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4119PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4120TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4121
085dd6e6
JM
4122* OBSOLETE configurations
4123
4124Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4125Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4126Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4127ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4128Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4129
9debab2f
AC
4130Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4131but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4132these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4133be permanently REMOVED.
4134
5330533d
SS
4135* Gould support removed
4136
4137Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4138
bc9e5bbf
AC
4139* New features for SVR4
4140
4141On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4142without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4143load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4144
4145* Many C++ enhancements
4146
4147C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4148in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4149
adf40b2e
JM
4150* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4151
4152A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4153sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4154with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4155``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4156
4157 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4158 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4159
43e526b9
JM
4160* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4161
4162A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4163expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4164instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4165
4166The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4167added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4168
96baa820
JM
4169* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4170
4171The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4172``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4173include ``set remote P-packet''.
4174
11cf8741
JM
4175* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4176
4177The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4178accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4179``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4180
7876dd43
DB
4181* ``apropos'' command added.
4182
4183The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4184documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4185try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4186
bc9e5bbf
AC
4187* New MI interface
4188
4189A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4190interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4191process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4192"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4193enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4194
4195 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4196
c906108c
SS
4197*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4198
4199* New native configurations
4200
4201HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4202HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4203M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4204
4205* New targets
4206
4207Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4208Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4209Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4210
4211* OBSOLETE configurations
4212
4213Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4214
4215Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4216but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4217these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4218be permanently REMOVED.
4219
4220* ANSI/ISO C
4221
4222As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4223buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4224containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4225use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4226available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4227configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4228information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4229already.
4230
4231* Readline 2.2
4232
4233GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4234
4235* set extension-language
4236
4237You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4238languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4239you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4240 set extension-language .c c++
4241The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4242and their associated languages.
4243
4244* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4245
4246When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4247you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4248PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4249
4250 set processor NAME
4251
4252sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4253following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4254
4255 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4256 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4257 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4258 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4259 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4260 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4261 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4262 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4263 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4264 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4265 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4266
4267At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4268special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4269registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4270only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4271
4272* HP-UX support
4273
4274Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4275more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4276library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4277support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4278for xdb and dbx commands.
4279
4280* Catchpoints
4281
4282HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4283generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4284to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4285
4286This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4287argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4288output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4289
4290* Debugging across forks
4291
4292On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4293in the inferior.
4294
4295* TUI
4296
4297HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4298it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4299configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4300
4301* GDB remote protocol additions
4302
4303A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4304Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4305fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4306allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4307
4308For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4309full 64-bit address. The command
4310
4311 set remoteaddresssize 32
4312
4313can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4314the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4315will be discarded.
4316
4317In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4318command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4319
4320 maint packet heythere
4321
4322sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4323disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4324time.
4325
4326The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4327target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4328downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4329
4330* Tracing can collect general expressions
4331
4332You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4333further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4334doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4335
4336* mask-address variable for Mips
4337
4338For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4339a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4340of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4341
4342* Higher serial baud rates
4343
4344GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4345230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4346to achieve all of these rates.)
4347
4348* i960 simulator
4349
4350The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4351builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4352
4353
4354*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4355
4356* New native configurations
4357
4358Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4359Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4360Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4361PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4362PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4363Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4364Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4365
4366* New targets
4367
4368Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4369Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4370Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4371Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4372MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4373MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4374MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4375Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4376Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4377Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4378NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4379
4380* New debugging protocols
4381
4382ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4383M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4384DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4385PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4386PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4387Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4388
4389* DWARF 2
4390
4391All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4392format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4393information.
4394
4395* Java frontend
4396
4397GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4398only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4399
4400* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4401
4402For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4403loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4404locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4405
4406* Live range splitting
4407
4408GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4409range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4410more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4411
4412* Hurd support
4413
4414GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4415updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4416
4417* ARM Thumb support
4418
4419GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4420instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4421instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4422accordingly.
4423
4424* MIPS16 support
4425
4426GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4427instruction set.
4428
4429* Overlay support
4430
4431GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4432linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4433will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4434control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4435additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4436in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4437
4438* info symbol
4439
4440The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4441the symbol at the specified address.
4442
4443* Trace support
4444
4445The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4446asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4447extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4448includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4449file tracepoint.c for more details.
4450
4451* MIPS simulator
4452
4453Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4454by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4455of most MIPS variants.
4456
4457* Sparc simulator
4458
4459Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4460by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4461Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4462
4463* set architecture
4464
4465For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4466basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4467architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4468the possible architectures.
4469
4470*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4471
4472* New native configurations
4473
4474Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4475M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4476PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4477PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4478PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4479RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4480
4481* New targets
4482
4483ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4484I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4485MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4486MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4487PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4488Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4489Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4490
4491* PowerPC simulator
4492
4493The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4494contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4495PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4496basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4497performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4498
4499* Solaris 2.5
4500
4501GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4502
4503* Windows 95/NT native
4504
4505GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4506To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4507which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4508Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4509ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4510
4511* dont-repeat command
4512
4513If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4514command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4515useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4516extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4517
4518* Send break instead of ^C
4519
4520The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4521rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4522GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4523
4524* Remote protocol timeout
4525
4526The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4527that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4528to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4529
4530* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4531
4532By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4533loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4534stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4535when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4536in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4537
4538Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4539/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4540automatically on hpux10.
4541
4542* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4543
4544Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4545
4546* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4547
4548When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4549may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4550the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4551every character. The default value is 1050.
4552
4553* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4554
4555If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4556a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4557replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4558details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4559remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4560to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4561
4562* Speedups for remote debugging
4563
4564GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4565the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4566and more efficient S-record downloading.
4567
4568* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4569
4570GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4571Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4572
4573*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4574
4575* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4576
4577The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4578can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4579
4580* Remote targets use caching
4581
4582Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4583remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4584it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4585debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4586off' turns the the data cache off.
4587
4588* Remote targets may have threads
4589
4590The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4591in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4592gdb/remote.c for details.
4593
4594* NetROM support
4595
4596If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4597support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4598acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4599write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4600support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4601another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4602sequence is something like
4603
4604 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4605 load <prog>
4606 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4607
4608* Macintosh host
4609
4610GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4611may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4612it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4613available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4614device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4615directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4616scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4617mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4618
4619* Autoconf
4620
4621GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4622but does simplify configuration and building.
4623
4624* hpux10
4625
4626GDB now supports hpux10.
4627
4628*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4629
4630* New native configurations
4631
4632x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4633x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4634NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4635Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4636
4637* New targets
4638
4639A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4640HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4641CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4642PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4643WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4644
4645* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4646
4647GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4648possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4649filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4650the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4651if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4652
4653* Arguments to user-defined commands
4654
4655User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4656Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4657trivial example:
4658define adder
4659 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4660
4661To execute the command use:
4662adder 1 2 3
4663
4664Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4665Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4666use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4667
4668* New `if' and `while' commands
4669
4670This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4671commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4672expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4673execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4674terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4675`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4676if the expression is zero.
4677
4678* Fortran source language mode
4679
4680GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4681Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4682variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4683with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4684Fortran compilers.
4685
4686* Better HPUX support
4687
4688Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4689running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4690processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4691for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4692that behavior do the following before running the program:
4693
4694 adb -w a.out
4695 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4696 control-d
4697
4698This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4699To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4700
4701 adb -w a.out
4702 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4703 control-d
4704
4705You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4706the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4707external linkage.
4708
4709GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4710HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4711
4712* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4713
4714You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4715commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4716current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4717"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4718associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4719configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4720
4721* New DOS host serial code
4722
4723This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4724no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4725a PC's serial port.
4726
4727*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4728
4729* New "complete" command
4730
4731This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4732were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4733
4734* Trailing space optional in prompt
4735
4736"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4737allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4738
4739* Breakpoint hit counts
4740
4741"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4742has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4743can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4744to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4745less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4746that breakpoint.
4747
4748* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4749
4750"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4751an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4752arrays actually contain only short strings.
4753
4754* Shared library breakpoints
4755
4756In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4757breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4758
4759* Hardware watchpoints
4760
4761There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4762targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4763
55241689 4764Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4765
4766* Annotations
4767
4768Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4769and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4770
4771* Improved Irix 5 support
4772
4773GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4774
4775* Improved HPPA support
4776
4777GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4778
4779* New native configurations
4780
4781Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4782HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4783Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4784RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4785
4786* New targets
4787
4788OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4789MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4790Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4791
4792* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4793
4794There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4795This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4796
4797* Fixes
4798
4799As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4800and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4801
4802*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4803
4804* Irix 5 is now supported
4805
4806* HPPA support
4807
4808GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4809to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4810GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4811of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4812can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4813
4814
4815*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4816
4817* User visible changes:
4818
4819* Remote Debugging
4820
4821The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4822target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4823debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4824integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4825debugging info for the mips target).
4826
4827* DEC Alpha native support
4828
4829GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4830debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4831work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4832Alpha-specific notes.
4833
4834* Preliminary thread implementation
4835
4836GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4837
4838* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4839
4840This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4841to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4842for details).
4843
4844* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4845
4846This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4847mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4848call methods, ...etc.
4849
4850*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4851
4852 * User visible changes:
4853
4854Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4855supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4856other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4857somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4858
4859Filename completion now works.
4860
4861When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4862arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4863addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4864
4865All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4866vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4867should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4868your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4869to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4870
4871 * DEC alpha support
4872
4873This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4874cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4875
4876
4877*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4878
4879 * Testsuite
4880
4881This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4882The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4883via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4884
4885 * C++ demangling
4886
4887'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4888emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4889Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4890disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4891use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4892
4893 * Simulators
4894
4895GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4896So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4897Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4898
4899 * New targets supported
4900
4901H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4902H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4903SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4904Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4905IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4906
4907Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4908version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4909GO32 memory extender.
4910
4911 * New remote protocols
4912
4913MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4914
4915 * New source languages supported
4916
4917This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4918used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4919into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4920
4921
4922*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4923
4924 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4925
4926GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4927version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4928University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4929compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4930format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4931(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4932
4933Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4934
4935 * Faster and better demangling
4936
4937We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4938demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4939character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4940only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4941This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4942increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4943symbol lookups.
4944
4945`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4946from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4947compiler does not actually implement.
4948
4949 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4950
4951In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4952inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4953recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4954very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4955The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4956circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4957fix.
4958
4959The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4960release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4961
4962 * Improved configure script
4963
4964The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4965you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4966host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4967done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4968
4969We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4970version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4971`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4972The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4973only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4974We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4975
4976 * Documentation improvements
4977
4978There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4979produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4980before submitting changes.
4981
4982The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4983M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4984`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4985you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4986a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4987
4988*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4989We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4990been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4991or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4992`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4993around this problem.
4994
4995 * New features
4996
4997GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4998the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4999`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5000the target program.
5001
5002The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5003how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5004
5005 * New native hosts supported
5006
5007HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5008386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5009
5010 * New targets supported
5011
5012AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5013
5014 * New file formats supported
5015
5016BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5017HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5018
5019 * Major bug fixes
5020
5021Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5022
5023We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5024printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5025
5026We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5027for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5028release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5029
5030You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5031will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5032
5033We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5034for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5035especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5036libraries.
5037
5038The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5039information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5040command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5041any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5042when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5043
5044 * Internal improvements
5045
5046GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5047debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5048
5049GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5050Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5051symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5052contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5053shared code that handles any of them.
5054
5055 * New command line options
5056
5057We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5058
5059 * Mmalloc licensing
5060
5061The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5062General Public License.
5063
5064*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5065
5066 * Host/native/target split
5067
5068GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5069hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5070target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5071local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5072ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5073
5074The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5075GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5076is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5077code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5078any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5079built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5080handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5081
5082GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5083It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5084plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5085
5086 * New hosts supported
5087
5088HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5089386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5090386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5091
5092 * New targets supported
5093
5094Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
509568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5096
5097 * New native hosts supported
5098
5099386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5100 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5101386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5102
5103 * New file formats supported
5104
5105BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5106supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5107format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5108
5109 * New commands
5110
5111`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5112`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5113These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5114
5115`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5116
5117You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5118scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5119prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5120executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5121
5122 * C++ improvements
5123
5124We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5125info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5126symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5127
5128Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5129
5130 * Major bug fixes
5131
5132The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5133fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5134by the compiler.
5135
5136We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5137support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5138
5139John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5140slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5141that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5142purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5143the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5144mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5145
5146Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5147about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5148completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5149we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5150
5151 * AMD 29k support
5152
5153A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5154specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5155calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5156usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5157in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5158
5159We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5160Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5161of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5162resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5163
5164 * Remote interfaces
5165
5166We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5167with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5168message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5169This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5170needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5171breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5172each instruction being stepped through.
5173
5174The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5175registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5176
5177There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5178find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5179Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5180processor with a serial port.
5181
5182 * Configuration
5183
5184Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5185`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5186supported, and what files each one uses.
5187
5188 * Library changes
5189
5190There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5191disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5192Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5193disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5194
5195The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5196Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5197can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5198grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5199
5200 * Documentation
5201
5202The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5203reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5204as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5205encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5206system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5207bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5208
5209And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5210
5211
5212*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5213
5214 * Better support for C++ function names
5215
5216GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5217names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5218(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5219single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5220Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5221
5222GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5223the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5224You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5225lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5226for the list of formats.
5227
5228 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5229
5230Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5231C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5232directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5233can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5234usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5235about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5236this problem.)
5237
5238 * New 'maintenance' command
5239
5240All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5241the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5242can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5243
5244 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5245 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5246 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5247 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5248 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5249 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5250
5251The following commands are new:
5252
5253 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5254 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5255 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5256
5257 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5258
5259We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5260(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5261be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5262read after argv processing.
5263
5264 * New hosts supported
5265
5266Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5267
55241689 5268GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5269
5270We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5271is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5272for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5273masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5274fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5275It costs extra.
5276
5277 * New targets supported
5278
5279Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5280
5281 * More smarts about finding #include files
5282
5283GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5284all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5285greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5286especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5287the one that contains your sources.
5288
5289We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5290breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5291try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5292
5293 * Interesting infernals change
5294
5295GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5296section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5297target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5298stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5299
5300 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5301
5302There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5303 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5304 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5305
5306See the ChangeLog for details.
5307
5308*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5309
5310 * New machines supported (host and target)
5311
5312IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5313
5314SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5315
5316 * New malloc package
5317
5318GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5319Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5320capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5321This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5322pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5323more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5324
5325 * info proc
5326
5327The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5328'help info proc' for details.
5329
5330 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5331
5332The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5333Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5334possible.
5335
5336 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5337
5338Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5339support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5340conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5341environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5342that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5343in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5344
5345 * Cross byte order fixes
5346
5347Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5348targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5349
5350 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5351
5352If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5353system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5354`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5355program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5356called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5357Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5358and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5359the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5360option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5361starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5362
5363You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5364the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5365information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5366slower, but makes future operations faster.
5367
5368The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5369build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5370A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5371use is:
5372
5373 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5374
5375The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5376It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5377shared across multiple host platforms.
5378
5379 * longjmp() handling
5380
5381GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5382siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5383all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5384platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5385
5386 * Solaris 2.0
5387
5388Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5389this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5390reading symbols.
5391
5392 * Bug fixes
5393
5394As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5395People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5396crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5397
5398*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5399
5400 * New machines supported (host and target)
5401
5402SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5403 (except core files)
5404BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5405Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5406
5407 * New machines supported (target)
5408
5409AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5410
5411 * C++ support
5412
5413GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5414The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5415per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5416
5417GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5418`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5419extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5420good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5421will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5422released.
5423
5424 * New features for SVR4
5425
5426GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5427shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5428only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5429
5430The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5431on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5432it prints the address mappings of the process.
5433
5434If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5435bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5436
5437 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5438
5439Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5440now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5441skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5442make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5443same code linked statically.
5444
5445 * New Getopt
5446
5447GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5448version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5449continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5450Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5451added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5452future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5453
5454 * Bugs fixed
5455
5456The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5457Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5458See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5459
5460
5461*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5462
5463 * New machines supported (host and target)
5464
5465Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5466NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5467Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5468
5469 * Almost SCO Unix support
5470
5471We had hoped to support:
5472SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5473(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5474that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5475about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5476
5477 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5478
5479GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5480debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5481is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5482send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5483reqired (if any).
5484
5485 * New Readline
5486
5487GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5488is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5489required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5490
5491 * Bugs fixed
5492
5493The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5494Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5495See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5496
5497 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5498
5499GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5500supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5501symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5502
5503Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5504mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5505debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5506mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5507version 2.
5508
5509Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5510really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5511line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5512variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5513situation somewhat.
5514
5515When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5516However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5517methods.
5518
5519We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5520DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5521encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5522
5523
5524*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5525
5526 * Improved configuration
5527
5528Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5529Porting BFD is simpler.
5530
5531 * Stepping improved
5532
5533The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5534of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5535in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5536function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5537
5538 * Bug fixing
5539
5540Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5541
5542 * New host supported (not target)
5543
5544Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5545
5546
5547*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5548
5549 * Multiple source language support
5550
5551GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5552It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5553and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5554language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5555You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5556`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5557
5558 * GDB and Modula-2
5559
5560GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5561currently under development at the State University of New York at
5562Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5563continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5564
5565Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5566debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5567symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5568
5569There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5570in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5571
5572 * set write on/off
5573
5574GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5575a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5576the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5577by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5578effect immediately.
5579
5580 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5581
5582When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5583shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5584The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5585examining core files.
5586
5587 * set listsize
5588
5589You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5590The default is 10.
5591
5592 * New machines supported (host and target)
5593
5594SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5595Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5596Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5597
5598 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5599
5600IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5601
5602 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5603
5604AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5605AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5606Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5607
5608 * New remote interfaces
5609
5610AMD 29000 Adapt
5611AMD 29000 Minimon
5612
5613
5614*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5615
5616 * New Facilities
5617
5618Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5619
5620Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5621target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5622is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5623remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5624remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5625also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5626using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5627stub on the target system.
5628
5629New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5630
5631GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5632library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5633object file types such as a.out and coff.
5634
5635There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5636refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5637
5638
5639 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5640
5641All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5642by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5643
5644For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5645``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5646Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5647
5648What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5649print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5650will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5651all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5652
5653confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5654 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5655 it is already running. Default is ON.
5656
5657editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5658 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5659 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5660 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5661 Default is ON.
5662
5663history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5664 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5665 or the value of the environment variable
5666 GDBHISTFILE.
5667
5668history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5669 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5670 HISTSIZE.
5671
5672history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5673 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5674 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5675
5676history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5677 history expansion will be performed on
5678 command line input. The default is OFF.
5679
5680radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5681 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5682 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5683
5684height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5685 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5686 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5687 variable TERM.
5688
5689width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5690 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5691 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5692 variable TERM.
5693
5694Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5695``set width'' instead.
5696
5697print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5698 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5699 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5700 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5701
5702print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5703 is OFF.
5704
5705print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5706 "raw" form if off.
5707
5708print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5709 like instructions.
5710
5711print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5712
5713
5714 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5715
5716The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5717new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5718are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5719window.
5720
5721
5722 * Support for Shared Libraries
5723
5724GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5725Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5726before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5727happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5728At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5729from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5730shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5731It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5732
5733sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5734 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5735 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5736
5737info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5738
5739
5740 * Watchpoints
5741
5742A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5743expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5744tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5745quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5746problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5747more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5748
5749watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5750
5751info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5752
5753delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5754disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5755enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5756
5757
5758 * C++ multiple inheritance
5759
5760When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5761for C++ programs.
5762
5763 * C++ exception handling
5764
5765Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5766ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5767the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5768handler's context).
5769
5770catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5771 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5772 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5773
5774info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5775 current stack frame.
5776
5777
5778 * Minor command changes
5779
5780The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5781command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5782is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5783
5784The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5785at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5786frames without printing.
5787
5788 * New directory command
5789
5790'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5791The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5792about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5793with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5794find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5795
5796 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5797
5798For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5799for more details.
5800
5801GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5802two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5803Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5804where the program that you are debugging will run.