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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.6
5
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6* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
7bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
8Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
9
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10* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
11symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
12-Bsymbolic linker option.
13
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14* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
15recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
16is not supported.
17
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18* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
19frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
20
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21* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2232-bit or 64-bit register values.
23
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24* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
25
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26* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
27target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
28a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
29
e1f48ead 30* Arrays of explicitly SIGNED or UNSIGNED CHARs are now printed as arrays
f8b73d13 31of numbers.
e1f48ead 32
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33* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
34for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
f8b73d13 35only ARM and MIPS).
123dc839 36
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37* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
38iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 39
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40* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
41ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
42has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
43
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44* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
45
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46* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
47
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48* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
49layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
50segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
51
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52* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
53immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
54
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55* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
56"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
57packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
58where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
59Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
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60
61* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
62(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
cfa9d6d9 63
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64* New commands
65
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66set remoteflow
67show remoteflow
68 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
69 when debugging using remote targets.
70
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71set mem inaccessible-by-default
72show mem inaccessible-by-default
73 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
74 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
75 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
76 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
77 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
78
79set breakpoint auto-hw
80show breakpoint auto-hw
81 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
82 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
83 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
84 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
85 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
86 including "next" and "finish".
87
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88catch exception
89catch exception unhandled
90 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
91
92catch assert
93 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
94
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95set sysroot
96show sysroot
97 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
98 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
99 an alias to "set sysroot".
100
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101info spu
102 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
103 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
104 architecture.
105
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106* New native configurations
107
108OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
109
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110set tdesc filename
111unset tdesc filename
112show tdesc filename
113 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
114 not query the target for its built-in description.
115
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116* New targets
117
54fe9172 118OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 119MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 120Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 121
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122* New remote packets
123
124QPassSignals:
125 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
126 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
127
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128qXfer:features:read:
129 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
130 features.
6dd09645 131
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132qXfer:spu:read:
133qXfer:spu:write:
134 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
135 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
136
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137qXfer:libraries:read:
138 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
139 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
140 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
141 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
142
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143* Removed targets
144
145Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
146
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147alpha*-*-osf1*
148alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 149d10v-*-*
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150hppa*-*-hiux*
151i[34567]86-ncr-*
152i[34567]86-*-dgux*
153i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
154i[34567]86-*-netware*
155i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
156i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
157i[34567]86-*-sco*
158i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
159i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
160i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
161i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
162i[34567]86-*-unixware*
163i[34567]86-*-sysv*
164i[34567]86-*-isc*
165m68*-cisco*-*
166m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 167mips*-*-pe
483367ee 168rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 169sh*-*-pe
483367ee 170
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171* Other removed features
172
173target abug
174target cpu32bug
175target est
176target rom68k
177
178 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
179
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180target hms
181target e7000
182target sh3
183target sh3e
184
185 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
186 H8/300.
187
188target ocd
189
190 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
191 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
192 interfaces.
193
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194DWARF 1 support
195
196 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
197 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
198
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199Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
200
201 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
202 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
203 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
204 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
205
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206MIPS ".pdr" sections
207
208 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
209 in debugging information.
210
211Scheme support
212
213 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
214 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
215
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216set mips stack-arg-size
217set mips saved-gpreg-size
218
219 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
220
6dd09645 221*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 222
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223* New targets
224
225Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 226Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 227
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228* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
229(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
230running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
231
232* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
233Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
234supported.
235
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236* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
237broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
238
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239* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
240stub provides the required support.
241
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242* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
243longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
244
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245* New commands
246
247set substitute-path
248unset substitute-path
249show substitute-path
250 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
251 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
252 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
253 between compilation and debugging.
254
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255set trace-commands
256show trace-commands
257 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
258 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
259 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
260
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261* REMOVED features
262
263The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
264
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265Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
266an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
267
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268The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
269
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270* New remote packets
271
272qSupported:
273 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
274 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
275 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
276 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
277 target.
278
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279qXfer:auxv:read:
280 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
281 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
282
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283qXfer:memory-map:read:
284 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
285 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
286
287vFlashErase:
288vFlashWrite:
289vFlashDone:
290 Erase and program a flash memory device.
291
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292* Removed remote packets
293
294qPart:auxv:read:
295 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
296 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
297
e374b601 298*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 299
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300* New targets
301
302Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
303
304Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
305
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306* New commands
307
308init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
309 only if it doesn't already have a value.
310
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311The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
312
313checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
314
315restart <n> Return the program state to a
316 previously saved state.
317
318info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
319
320delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
321
322set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
323 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
324
325info forks List forks of the user program that
326 are available to be debugged.
327
328fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
329 forks of the user program that are
330 available to be debugged.
331
332delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
333 that are available to be debugged (and
334 kill the forked process).
335
336detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
337 that are available to be debugged (and
338 allow the process to continue).
339
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340* New architecture
341
342Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
343
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344* Improved Windows host support
345
346GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
347native console support, and remote communications using either
348network sockets or serial ports.
349
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350* Improved Modula-2 language support
351
352GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
353basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
354pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
355printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
356written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
357GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
358
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359* REMOVED features
360
361The ARM rdi-share module.
362
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363The Netware NLM debug server.
364
53e5f3cf 365*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 366
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367* New native configurations
368
02a677ac 369OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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370OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
371
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372* New targets
373
374Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
375
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376* New command line options
377
378--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
379--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
380 the child (debugged) program exited with.
381--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
382 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
383 specified multiple times and in conjunction
384 with the --command (-x) option.
385
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386* Deprecated commands removed
387
388The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
389removed:
390
391 Command Replacement
392 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
393 othernames set arm disassembler
394 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
395 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
396 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
397 regs info registers
398
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399* New BSD user-level threads support
400
401It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
402library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
403configurations are:
404
405FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
406FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
407OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
408
409Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
410are not yet supported.
411
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412* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
413(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
414
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415* REMOVED configurations and files
416
417VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 418Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 419National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 420
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421* New "set print array-indexes" command
422
423After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
424when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
425behavior.
426
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427* VAX floating point support
428
429GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
430
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431* User-defined command support
432
433In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
434to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
435section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
436
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437*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
438
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439* New command line option
440
441GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
442debugging.
443
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444* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
445
446GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
447information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
448by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
449proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
450to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 451
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452* Internationalization
453
454When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
455internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
456continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
457
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458* Ada
459
460Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
461implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
462into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
463
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464* New native configurations
465
466GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
467
468* Remote 'p' packet
469
470GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
471packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
472
473* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
474
475GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
476The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
477features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
478i386 application).
479
480GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
481compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
482continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
483configurations:
484
485hppa-*-hpux
486ia64-*-aix
487mips-*-irix*
488*-*-lynx
489mips-*-linux-gnu
490sds protocol
491xdr protocol
492powerpc bdm protocol
493
494Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
495made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
496
497* OBSOLETE configurations and files
498
499Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
500been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
501configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
502permanently REMOVED.
503
504h8300-*-*
505mcore-*-*
506mn10300-*-*
507ns32k-*-*
508sh64-*-*
509v850-*-*
510
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511*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
512
513* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
514
515When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
516heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
517been fixed.
518
519* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
520
521When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
522fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
523IRIX long double values).
524
525* VAX and "next"
526
527A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
528command. This problem has been fixed.
529
860660cb 530*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 531
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532* Fix for ``many threads''
533
534On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
535rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
536error message:
537
538 ptrace: No such process.
539 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
540
541This problem has been fixed.
542
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543* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
544
545Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
546GDB to dump core).
547
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548* New ``start'' command.
549
550This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
551
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552* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
553
554Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
555live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
556platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
557
558FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
559FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
560NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
561NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
562NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
563OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
564OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
565OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
566OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
567
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568* Signal trampoline code overhauled
569
570Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
571These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
572of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
573call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
574signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
575
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576Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
577features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
578include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 579
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580* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
581
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582* New native configurations
583
97dc871c 584GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 585OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
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586OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
587OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 588OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 589NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 590OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 591
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592* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
593
594GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
595The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
596including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
597migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
598compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
599work, was also included.
600
601GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
602module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
603
604h8300-*-*
605mcore-*-*
606mn10300-*-*
607ns32k-*-*
608sh64-*-*
609v850-*-*
610xstormy16-*-*
611
612Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
613made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
614
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615* REMOVED configurations and files
616
617Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
618Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
619Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
620Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
621Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
622AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
623Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
624decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
625riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
626sonymips mips-sony-*
627sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
628
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629*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
630
631* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
632
633The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
634GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
635command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
636program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
637with GDB".
638
639* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
640
641Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
642libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
643cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
644GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
645shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
646the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
647are created.
648
649Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
650
651* Fixed ISO-C build problems
652
653The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
654non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
655compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
656
657* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
658
659Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
660wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
661
662* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
663
664The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
665permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
666systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
667
668* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
669
670Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
671has been updated to use constant array sizes.
672
673* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
674
675GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
676its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
677panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
678
679* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
680
681When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
682by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
683not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
684
faae5abe 685*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 686
9175c9a3
MC
687* Removed --with-mmalloc
688
689Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
690conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
691
3cc87ec0
MK
692* Changes in AMD64 configurations
693
694The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
695the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
696and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
697you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
698
f0424ef6
MK
699* Revised SPARC target
700
701The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
702FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
703support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
704from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
705(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 706
59659be2
ILT
707* New C++ demangler
708
709GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
710names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
711with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
712programs.
713
9e08b29b
DJ
714* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
715
716GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
717arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
718encountered these.
719
8dfe8985
DC
720* C++ nested types and namespaces
721
722GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
723improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
724is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
725Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
726namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
727"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
728frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
729if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
730GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
731
cced5e27
MK
732* New native configurations
733
734NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 735OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 736OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
737OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
738OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 739
b4b4b794
KI
740* New debugging protocols
741
742M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
743
7989c619
AC
744* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
745
746The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
747and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
748tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
749
5994185b
AC
750* OBSOLETE configurations and files
751
752Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
753been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
754configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
755permanently REMOVED.
756
757Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
758Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
759Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
760Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
761Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
762AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
763Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
764decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
765riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
766sonymips mips-sony-*
767sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 768
0ddabb4c
AC
769* REMOVED configurations and files
770
771SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
772SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
773Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
774Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
775H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
776HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
777HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
778HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
779PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 780386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
781Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
782 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
783 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
784SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
785SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
786Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
787Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 788
c7f1390e
DJ
789*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
790
1fe43d45
AC
791* Objective-C
792
793Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
794integrated into GDB.
795
e6beb428
AC
796* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
797
798DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
799information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
800By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
801backtraces.
802
803The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
804have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
805DWARF 2 CFI support.
806
807* Hosted file I/O.
808
809GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
810file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
811remote protocol documentation for details.
812
813* All targets using the new architecture framework.
814
815All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
816architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
817to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
818ppc32 on ppc64).
819
820* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
821
822GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
823per-thread variables.
824
825* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
826
827GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
828GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
829
830* Separate debug info.
831
832GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
833automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
834of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
835system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
836and optional debug files.
837
838* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
839
840DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
841describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
842debugger.
843
844GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
845for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
846
847* Java
848
849A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
850Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
851considered "useable".
852
85f8f974
DJ
853* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
854
855The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
856commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
857kernel.
858
0fac0b41
DJ
859* GDB supports logging output to a file
860
861There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
862used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 863
6ad8ae5c
DJ
864* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
865
866The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
867disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
868command.
869
e286caf2 870* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
871
872The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
873registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
874
d28f9cdf
DJ
875* Profiling support
876
877A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
878be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
879session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
880"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
881data, for more informative profiling results.
882
da0f9dcd
AC
883* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
884
885The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
886option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 887"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
888
889Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
890removed.
891
fb9b6b35
JJ
892Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
893Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
894Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
895 in a subsequent -var-update.
896
954a4db8
MK
897* New native configurations.
898
899FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
900
6760f9e6
JB
901* Multi-arched targets.
902
b4263afa 903HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 904Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 905
1b831c93
AC
906* OBSOLETE configurations and files
907
908Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
909been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
910configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
911permanently REMOVED.
912
8b0e5691 913Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 914Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 915H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
916HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
917HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
918HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 919PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
920Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
921 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
922 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
923Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
924Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 925
5835abe7
NC
926* REMOVED configurations and files
927
928V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
929Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
930IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
931i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
932i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
933i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
934HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
935 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
936 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
937Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
938Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
939Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
940OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
941I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 942
a094c6fb
AC
943* MIPS $fp behavior changed
944
945The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
946the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
947context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
948address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
949The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
950
299ffc64 951*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 952
46248966
AC
953* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
954
955When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
956`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
957in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
958library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
959shared libs like mad''.
960
b9d14705 961* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 962
b9d14705
DJ
963Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
964the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
965arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
966powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 967
e0e9281e
JB
968* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
969
970GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
971and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
972they expand.
973
dd73b9bb
AC
974The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
975invocations in expression, and shows the result.
976
977The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
978macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
979
e0e9281e
JB
980Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
981information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
982your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
983information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
984
2250ee0c
CV
985* Multi-arched targets.
986
6e3ba3b8
JT
987DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
988DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 989NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 990National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
991Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
992Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 993
cd9bfe15 994* New targets.
e33ce519 995
456f8b9d
DB
996Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
997
e33ce519 998
da8ca43d
JT
999* New native configurations
1000
1001Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1002SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1003MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1004UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1005
cd9bfe15
AC
1006* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1007
1008Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1009been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1010configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1011permanently REMOVED.
1012
92eb23c5 1013Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1014OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1015IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1016Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1017Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1018Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1019i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1020i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1021i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1022HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1023 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1024 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1025I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1026
db034ac5
AC
1027* OBSOLETE languages
1028
1029CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1030
cd9bfe15
AC
1031* REMOVED configurations and files
1032
1033AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1034A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1035AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1036AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1037AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1038
1039testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1040
20f01a46
DH
1041* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1042
1043This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1044commands. The default is 1024.
1045
a5941fbf
MK
1046* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1047
1048Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1049
89743e04
MS
1050* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1051
1052These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1053to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1054from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1055
9fb14e79
JB
1056* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1057
1058The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1059including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1060of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1061
2037aebb
AC
1062*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1063
1064* New targets.
1065
1066Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1067
1068* Bug fixes
1069
1070gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1071mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1072Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1073
1074gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1075dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1076Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1077
1078Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1079Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1080By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1081
1082i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1083avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1084By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1085
37057839 1086*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1087
1a703748
MS
1088* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1089
1090This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1091really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1092In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1093target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1094This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1095(notably embedded) targets.
1096
cefd4ef5
MS
1097* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1098
55241689
AC
1099This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1100process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1101GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1102hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1103
352ed7b4
MS
1104* New command line option
1105
1106GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1107
1108* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1109
1110There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1111command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1112a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1113be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1114open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1115issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1116a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1117it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1118GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1119is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1120
fe419ffc
RE
1121* Changes in ARM configurations.
1122
1123Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1124configuration is fully multi-arch.
1125
eb7cedd9
MK
1126* New native configurations
1127
fe419ffc 1128ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1129x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1130AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1131Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1132
c9f63e6b
CV
1133* New targets
1134
1135Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1136
9b4ff276
AC
1137* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1138
1139Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1140been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1141configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1142permanently REMOVED.
1143
1144AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1145A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1146AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1147AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1148AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1149
b4ceaee6 1150testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1151
e2caac18
AC
1152* REMOVED configurations and files
1153
1154TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1155WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1156PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1157PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1158PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1159Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1160Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1161 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1162SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1163Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1164Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1165ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1166Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1167
c2a727fa
TT
1168* Changes to command line processing
1169
1170The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1171for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1172
467d8519
TT
1173* Changes to key bindings
1174
1175There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1176
7072a954
AC
1177*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1178
1179Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1180
1181Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1182corrupted.
1183
1184Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1185
1186Numerous documentation fixes.
1187
1188Numerous testsuite fixes.
1189
34f47bc4 1190*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1191
1192* New native configurations
1193
1194Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1195x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1196MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1197MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1198ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1199s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1200
bf64bfd6
AC
1201* New targets
1202
def90278 1203Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1204CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1205UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1206
17e78a56 1207* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1208
1209x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1210Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1211Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1212 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1213TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1214WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1215Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1216PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1217PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1218PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1219SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1220Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1221ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1222Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1223
17e78a56
AC
1224stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1225kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1226
7fcca85b
AC
1227Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1228been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1229configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1230permanently REMOVED.
1231
a196c81c 1232* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1233
1234Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1235Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1236Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1237ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1238Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1239ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1240
6d6b80e5 1241* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1242
6d6b80e5 1243GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1244sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1245present.
1246
bf64bfd6
AC
1247* Other news:
1248
e23194cb
EZ
1249* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1250
1251* The MI enabled by default.
1252
1253The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1254revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1255engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1256using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1257which is now deprecated.
1258
1259* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1260
1261GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1262main features are supported:
1263
1264 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1265
1266 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1267 extension;
1268
1269 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1270
1271 - a Pascal expression parser.
1272
1273However, some important features are not yet supported.
1274
1275 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1276
1277 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1278
1279 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1280 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1281
1282 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1283
1284 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1285
1286* Changes in completion.
1287
1288Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1289to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1290users expect at the shell prompt.
1291
1292Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1293`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1294program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1295files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1296be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1297considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1298name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1299
1300`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1301
1302* New platform-independent commands:
1303
1304It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1305hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1306documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1307
1308* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1309
d7275149
MK
1310Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1311revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1312many threads as your system allows you to have.
1313
e23194cb
EZ
1314Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1315
d7275149
MK
1316Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1317multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1318
1319* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1320
1321Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1322
e23194cb
EZ
1323GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1324debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1325supported.)
1326
1327* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1328
1329Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1330breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1331implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1332put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1333and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1334registers.
1335
1336The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1337debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1338watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1339
1340* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1341
1342New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1343the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1344
1345New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1346display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1347IDT.
1348
1349New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1350from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1351New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1352a given linear address.
1353
1354GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1355program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1356which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1357
1358DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1359
6c56c069
EZ
1360It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1361
e23194cb
EZ
1362* Changes in documentation.
1363
1364All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1365Documentation License.
1366
1367Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1368manual.
1369
1370TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1371
1372Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1373manual.
1374
1375The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1376documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1377hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1378
5d6640b1
AC
1379* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1380
1381The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1382``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1383contents of this file.
1384
1a1d8446
AC
1385* gdba.el deleted
1386
1387GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1388
9debab2f 1389*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1390
c63ce875
EZ
1391* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1392
1393Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1394programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1395displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1396greater level of detail.
1397
1398* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1399
1400It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1401bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1402on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1403written.
1404
1405* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1406
1407The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1408necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1409machines ``out of the box''.
1410
1411The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1412possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1413signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1414would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1415interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1416
1417It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1418standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1419even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1420and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1421terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1422
1423The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1424enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1425also works.
1426
1427DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1428GDB.
1429
1430It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1431directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1432times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1433breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1434
ed9a39eb
JM
1435* New native configurations
1436
1437ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1438PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1439
7a292a7a
SS
1440* New targets
1441
96baa820 1442Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1443x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1444PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1445TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1446
085dd6e6
JM
1447* OBSOLETE configurations
1448
1449Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1450Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1451Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1452ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1453Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1454
9debab2f
AC
1455Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1456but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1457these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1458be permanently REMOVED.
1459
5330533d
SS
1460* Gould support removed
1461
1462Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1463
bc9e5bbf
AC
1464* New features for SVR4
1465
1466On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1467without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1468load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1469
1470* Many C++ enhancements
1471
1472C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1473in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1474
adf40b2e
JM
1475* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1476
1477A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1478sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1479with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1480``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1481
1482 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1483 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1484
43e526b9
JM
1485* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1486
1487A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1488expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1489instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1490
1491The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1492added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1493
96baa820
JM
1494* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1495
1496The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1497``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1498include ``set remote P-packet''.
1499
11cf8741
JM
1500* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1501
1502The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1503accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1504``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1505
7876dd43
DB
1506* ``apropos'' command added.
1507
1508The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1509documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1510try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1511
bc9e5bbf
AC
1512* New MI interface
1513
1514A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1515interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1516process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1517"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1518enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1519
1520 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1521
c906108c
SS
1522*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1523
1524* New native configurations
1525
1526HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1527HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1528M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1529
1530* New targets
1531
1532Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1533Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1534Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1535
1536* OBSOLETE configurations
1537
1538Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1539
1540Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1541but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1542these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1543be permanently REMOVED.
1544
1545* ANSI/ISO C
1546
1547As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1548buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1549containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1550use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1551available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1552configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1553information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1554already.
1555
1556* Readline 2.2
1557
1558GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1559
1560* set extension-language
1561
1562You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1563languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1564you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1565 set extension-language .c c++
1566The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1567and their associated languages.
1568
1569* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1570
1571When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1572you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1573PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1574
1575 set processor NAME
1576
1577sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1578following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1579
1580 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1581 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1582 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1583 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1584 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1585 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1586 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1587 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1588 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1589 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1590 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1591
1592At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1593special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1594registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1595only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1596
1597* HP-UX support
1598
1599Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1600more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1601library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1602support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1603for xdb and dbx commands.
1604
1605* Catchpoints
1606
1607HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1608generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1609to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1610
1611This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1612argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1613output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1614
1615* Debugging across forks
1616
1617On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1618in the inferior.
1619
1620* TUI
1621
1622HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1623it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1624configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1625
1626* GDB remote protocol additions
1627
1628A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1629Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1630fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1631allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1632
1633For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1634full 64-bit address. The command
1635
1636 set remoteaddresssize 32
1637
1638can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1639the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1640will be discarded.
1641
1642In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1643command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1644
1645 maint packet heythere
1646
1647sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1648disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1649time.
1650
1651The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1652target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1653downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1654
1655* Tracing can collect general expressions
1656
1657You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1658further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1659doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1660
1661* mask-address variable for Mips
1662
1663For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1664a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1665of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1666
1667* Higher serial baud rates
1668
1669GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1670230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1671to achieve all of these rates.)
1672
1673* i960 simulator
1674
1675The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1676builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1677
1678
1679*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1680
1681* New native configurations
1682
1683Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1684Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1685Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1686PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1687PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1688Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1689Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1690
1691* New targets
1692
1693Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1694Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1695Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1696Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1697MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1698MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1699MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1700Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1701Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1702Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1703NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1704
1705* New debugging protocols
1706
1707ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1708M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1709DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1710PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1711PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1712Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1713
1714* DWARF 2
1715
1716All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1717format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1718information.
1719
1720* Java frontend
1721
1722GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1723only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1724
1725* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1726
1727For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1728loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1729locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1730
1731* Live range splitting
1732
1733GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1734range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1735more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1736
1737* Hurd support
1738
1739GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1740updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1741
1742* ARM Thumb support
1743
1744GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1745instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1746instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1747accordingly.
1748
1749* MIPS16 support
1750
1751GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1752instruction set.
1753
1754* Overlay support
1755
1756GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1757linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1758will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1759control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1760additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1761in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1762
1763* info symbol
1764
1765The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1766the symbol at the specified address.
1767
1768* Trace support
1769
1770The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1771asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1772extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1773includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1774file tracepoint.c for more details.
1775
1776* MIPS simulator
1777
1778Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1779by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1780of most MIPS variants.
1781
1782* Sparc simulator
1783
1784Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1785by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1786Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1787
1788* set architecture
1789
1790For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1791basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1792architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1793the possible architectures.
1794
1795*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1796
1797* New native configurations
1798
1799Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1800M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1801PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1802PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1803PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1804RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1805
1806* New targets
1807
1808ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1809I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1810MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1811MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1812PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1813Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1814Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1815
1816* PowerPC simulator
1817
1818The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1819contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1820PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1821basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1822performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1823
1824* Solaris 2.5
1825
1826GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1827
1828* Windows 95/NT native
1829
1830GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1831To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1832which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1833Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1834ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1835
1836* dont-repeat command
1837
1838If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1839command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1840useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1841extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1842
1843* Send break instead of ^C
1844
1845The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1846rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1847GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1848
1849* Remote protocol timeout
1850
1851The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1852that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1853to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1854
1855* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1856
1857By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1858loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1859stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1860when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1861in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1862
1863Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1864/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1865automatically on hpux10.
1866
1867* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1868
1869Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1870
1871* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1872
1873When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1874may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1875the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1876every character. The default value is 1050.
1877
1878* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1879
1880If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1881a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1882replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1883details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1884remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1885to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1886
1887* Speedups for remote debugging
1888
1889GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1890the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1891and more efficient S-record downloading.
1892
1893* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1894
1895GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1896Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1897
1898*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1899
1900* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1901
1902The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1903can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1904
1905* Remote targets use caching
1906
1907Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1908remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1909it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1910debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1911off' turns the the data cache off.
1912
1913* Remote targets may have threads
1914
1915The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1916in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1917gdb/remote.c for details.
1918
1919* NetROM support
1920
1921If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1922support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1923acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1924write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1925support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1926another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1927sequence is something like
1928
1929 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1930 load <prog>
1931 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1932
1933* Macintosh host
1934
1935GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1936may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1937it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1938available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1939device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1940directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1941scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1942mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1943
1944* Autoconf
1945
1946GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1947but does simplify configuration and building.
1948
1949* hpux10
1950
1951GDB now supports hpux10.
1952
1953*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1954
1955* New native configurations
1956
1957x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1958x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1959NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1960Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1961
1962* New targets
1963
1964A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1965HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1966CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1967PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1968WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1969
1970* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1971
1972GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1973possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1974filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1975the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1976if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1977
1978* Arguments to user-defined commands
1979
1980User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1981Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1982trivial example:
1983define adder
1984 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1985
1986To execute the command use:
1987adder 1 2 3
1988
1989Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1990Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1991use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1992
1993* New `if' and `while' commands
1994
1995This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1996commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1997expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1998execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1999terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2000`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2001if the expression is zero.
2002
2003* Fortran source language mode
2004
2005GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2006Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2007variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2008with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2009Fortran compilers.
2010
2011* Better HPUX support
2012
2013Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2014running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2015processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2016for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2017that behavior do the following before running the program:
2018
2019 adb -w a.out
2020 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2021 control-d
2022
2023This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2024To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2025
2026 adb -w a.out
2027 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2028 control-d
2029
2030You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2031the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2032external linkage.
2033
2034GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2035HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2036
2037* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2038
2039You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2040commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2041current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2042"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2043associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2044configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2045
2046* New DOS host serial code
2047
2048This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2049no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2050a PC's serial port.
2051
2052*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2053
2054* New "complete" command
2055
2056This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2057were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2058
2059* Trailing space optional in prompt
2060
2061"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2062allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2063
2064* Breakpoint hit counts
2065
2066"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2067has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2068can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2069to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2070less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2071that breakpoint.
2072
2073* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2074
2075"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2076an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2077arrays actually contain only short strings.
2078
2079* Shared library breakpoints
2080
2081In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2082breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2083
2084* Hardware watchpoints
2085
2086There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2087targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2088
55241689 2089Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2090
2091* Annotations
2092
2093Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2094and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2095
2096* Improved Irix 5 support
2097
2098GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2099
2100* Improved HPPA support
2101
2102GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2103
2104* New native configurations
2105
2106Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2107HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2108Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2109RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2110
2111* New targets
2112
2113OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2114MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2115Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2116
2117* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2118
2119There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2120This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2121
2122* Fixes
2123
2124As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2125and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2126
2127*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2128
2129* Irix 5 is now supported
2130
2131* HPPA support
2132
2133GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2134to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2135GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2136of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2137can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2138
2139
2140*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2141
2142* User visible changes:
2143
2144* Remote Debugging
2145
2146The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2147target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2148debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2149integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2150debugging info for the mips target).
2151
2152* DEC Alpha native support
2153
2154GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2155debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2156work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2157Alpha-specific notes.
2158
2159* Preliminary thread implementation
2160
2161GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2162
2163* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2164
2165This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2166to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2167for details).
2168
2169* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2170
2171This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2172mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2173call methods, ...etc.
2174
2175*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2176
2177 * User visible changes:
2178
2179Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2180supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2181other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2182somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2183
2184Filename completion now works.
2185
2186When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2187arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2188addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2189
2190All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2191vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2192should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2193your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2194to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2195
2196 * DEC alpha support
2197
2198This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2199cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2200
2201
2202*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2203
2204 * Testsuite
2205
2206This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2207The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2208via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2209
2210 * C++ demangling
2211
2212'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2213emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2214Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2215disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2216use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2217
2218 * Simulators
2219
2220GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2221So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2222Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2223
2224 * New targets supported
2225
2226H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2227H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2228SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2229Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2230IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2231
2232Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2233version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2234GO32 memory extender.
2235
2236 * New remote protocols
2237
2238MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2239
2240 * New source languages supported
2241
2242This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2243used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2244into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2245
2246
2247*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2248
2249 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2250
2251GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2252version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2253University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2254compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2255format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2256(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2257
2258Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2259
2260 * Faster and better demangling
2261
2262We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2263demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2264character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2265only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2266This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2267increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2268symbol lookups.
2269
2270`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2271from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2272compiler does not actually implement.
2273
2274 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2275
2276In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2277inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2278recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2279very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2280The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2281circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2282fix.
2283
2284The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2285release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2286
2287 * Improved configure script
2288
2289The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2290you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2291host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2292done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2293
2294We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2295version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2296`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2297The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2298only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2299We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2300
2301 * Documentation improvements
2302
2303There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2304produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2305before submitting changes.
2306
2307The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2308M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2309`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2310you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2311a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2312
2313*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2314We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2315been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2316or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2317`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2318around this problem.
2319
2320 * New features
2321
2322GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2323the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2324`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2325the target program.
2326
2327The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2328how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2329
2330 * New native hosts supported
2331
2332HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2333386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2334
2335 * New targets supported
2336
2337AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2338
2339 * New file formats supported
2340
2341BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2342HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2343
2344 * Major bug fixes
2345
2346Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2347
2348We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2349printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2350
2351We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2352for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2353release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2354
2355You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2356will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2357
2358We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2359for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2360especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2361libraries.
2362
2363The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2364information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2365command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2366any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2367when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2368
2369 * Internal improvements
2370
2371GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2372debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2373
2374GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2375Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2376symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2377contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2378shared code that handles any of them.
2379
2380 * New command line options
2381
2382We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2383
2384 * Mmalloc licensing
2385
2386The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2387General Public License.
2388
2389*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2390
2391 * Host/native/target split
2392
2393GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2394hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2395target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2396local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2397ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2398
2399The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2400GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2401is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2402code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2403any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2404built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2405handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2406
2407GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2408It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2409plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2410
2411 * New hosts supported
2412
2413HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2414386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2415386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2416
2417 * New targets supported
2418
2419Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
242068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2421
2422 * New native hosts supported
2423
2424386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2425 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2426386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2427
2428 * New file formats supported
2429
2430BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2431supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2432format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2433
2434 * New commands
2435
2436`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2437`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2438These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2439
2440`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2441
2442You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2443scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2444prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2445executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2446
2447 * C++ improvements
2448
2449We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2450info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2451symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2452
2453Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2454
2455 * Major bug fixes
2456
2457The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2458fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2459by the compiler.
2460
2461We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2462support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2463
2464John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2465slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2466that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2467purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2468the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2469mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2470
2471Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2472about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2473completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2474we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2475
2476 * AMD 29k support
2477
2478A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2479specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2480calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2481usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2482in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2483
2484We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2485Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2486of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2487resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2488
2489 * Remote interfaces
2490
2491We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2492with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2493message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2494This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2495needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2496breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2497each instruction being stepped through.
2498
2499The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2500registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2501
2502There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2503find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2504Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2505processor with a serial port.
2506
2507 * Configuration
2508
2509Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2510`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2511supported, and what files each one uses.
2512
2513 * Library changes
2514
2515There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2516disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2517Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2518disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2519
2520The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2521Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2522can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2523grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2524
2525 * Documentation
2526
2527The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2528reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2529as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2530encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2531system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2532bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2533
2534And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2535
2536
2537*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2538
2539 * Better support for C++ function names
2540
2541GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2542names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2543(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2544single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2545Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2546
2547GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2548the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2549You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2550lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2551for the list of formats.
2552
2553 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2554
2555Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2556C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2557directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2558can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2559usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2560about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2561this problem.)
2562
2563 * New 'maintenance' command
2564
2565All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2566the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2567can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2568
2569 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2570 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2571 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2572 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2573 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2574 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2575
2576The following commands are new:
2577
2578 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2579 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2580 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2581
2582 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2583
2584We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2585(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2586be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2587read after argv processing.
2588
2589 * New hosts supported
2590
2591Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2592
55241689 2593GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2594
2595We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2596is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2597for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2598masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2599fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2600It costs extra.
2601
2602 * New targets supported
2603
2604Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2605
2606 * More smarts about finding #include files
2607
2608GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2609all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2610greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2611especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2612the one that contains your sources.
2613
2614We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2615breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2616try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2617
2618 * Interesting infernals change
2619
2620GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2621section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2622target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2623stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2624
2625 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2626
2627There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2628 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2629 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2630
2631See the ChangeLog for details.
2632
2633*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2634
2635 * New machines supported (host and target)
2636
2637IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2638
2639SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2640
2641 * New malloc package
2642
2643GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2644Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2645capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2646This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2647pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2648more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2649
2650 * info proc
2651
2652The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2653'help info proc' for details.
2654
2655 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2656
2657The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2658Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2659possible.
2660
2661 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2662
2663Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2664support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2665conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2666environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2667that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2668in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2669
2670 * Cross byte order fixes
2671
2672Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2673targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2674
2675 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2676
2677If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2678system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2679`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2680program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2681called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2682Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2683and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2684the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2685option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2686starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2687
2688You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2689the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2690information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2691slower, but makes future operations faster.
2692
2693The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2694build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2695A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2696use is:
2697
2698 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2699
2700The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2701It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2702shared across multiple host platforms.
2703
2704 * longjmp() handling
2705
2706GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2707siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2708all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2709platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2710
2711 * Solaris 2.0
2712
2713Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2714this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2715reading symbols.
2716
2717 * Bug fixes
2718
2719As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2720People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2721crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2722
2723*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2724
2725 * New machines supported (host and target)
2726
2727SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2728 (except core files)
2729BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2730Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2731
2732 * New machines supported (target)
2733
2734AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2735
2736 * C++ support
2737
2738GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2739The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2740per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2741
2742GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2743`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2744extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2745good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2746will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2747released.
2748
2749 * New features for SVR4
2750
2751GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2752shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2753only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2754
2755The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2756on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2757it prints the address mappings of the process.
2758
2759If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2760bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2761
2762 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2763
2764Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2765now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2766skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2767make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2768same code linked statically.
2769
2770 * New Getopt
2771
2772GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2773version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2774continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2775Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2776added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2777future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2778
2779 * Bugs fixed
2780
2781The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2782Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2783See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2784
2785
2786*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2787
2788 * New machines supported (host and target)
2789
2790Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2791NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2792Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2793
2794 * Almost SCO Unix support
2795
2796We had hoped to support:
2797SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2798(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2799that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2800about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2801
2802 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2803
2804GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2805debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2806is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2807send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2808reqired (if any).
2809
2810 * New Readline
2811
2812GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2813is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2814required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2815
2816 * Bugs fixed
2817
2818The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2819Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2820See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2821
2822 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2823
2824GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2825supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2826symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2827
2828Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2829mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2830debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2831mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2832version 2.
2833
2834Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2835really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2836line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2837variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2838situation somewhat.
2839
2840When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2841However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2842methods.
2843
2844We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2845DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2846encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2847
2848
2849*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2850
2851 * Improved configuration
2852
2853Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2854Porting BFD is simpler.
2855
2856 * Stepping improved
2857
2858The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2859of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2860in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2861function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2862
2863 * Bug fixing
2864
2865Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2866
2867 * New host supported (not target)
2868
2869Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2870
2871
2872*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2873
2874 * Multiple source language support
2875
2876GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2877It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2878and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2879language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2880You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2881`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2882
2883 * GDB and Modula-2
2884
2885GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2886currently under development at the State University of New York at
2887Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2888continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2889
2890Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2891debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2892symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2893
2894There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2895in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2896
2897 * set write on/off
2898
2899GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2900a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2901the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2902by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2903effect immediately.
2904
2905 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2906
2907When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2908shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2909The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2910examining core files.
2911
2912 * set listsize
2913
2914You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2915The default is 10.
2916
2917 * New machines supported (host and target)
2918
2919SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2920Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2921Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2922
2923 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2924
2925IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2926
2927 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2928
2929AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2930AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2931Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2932
2933 * New remote interfaces
2934
2935AMD 29000 Adapt
2936AMD 29000 Minimon
2937
2938
2939*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2940
2941 * New Facilities
2942
2943Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2944
2945Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2946target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2947is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2948remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2949remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2950also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2951using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2952stub on the target system.
2953
2954New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2955
2956GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2957library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2958object file types such as a.out and coff.
2959
2960There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2961refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2962
2963
2964 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2965
2966All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2967by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2968
2969For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2970``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2971Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2972
2973What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2974print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2975will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2976all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2977
2978confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2979 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2980 it is already running. Default is ON.
2981
2982editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2983 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2984 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2985 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2986 Default is ON.
2987
2988history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2989 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2990 or the value of the environment variable
2991 GDBHISTFILE.
2992
2993history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2994 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2995 HISTSIZE.
2996
2997history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2998 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2999 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3000
3001history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3002 history expansion will be performed on
3003 command line input. The default is OFF.
3004
3005radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3006 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3007 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3008
3009height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3010 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3011 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3012 variable TERM.
3013
3014width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3015 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3016 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3017 variable TERM.
3018
3019Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3020``set width'' instead.
3021
3022print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3023 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3024 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3025 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3026
3027print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3028 is OFF.
3029
3030print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3031 "raw" form if off.
3032
3033print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3034 like instructions.
3035
3036print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3037
3038
3039 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3040
3041The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3042new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3043are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3044window.
3045
3046
3047 * Support for Shared Libraries
3048
3049GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3050Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3051before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3052happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3053At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3054from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3055shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3056It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3057
3058sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3059 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3060 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3061
3062info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3063
3064
3065 * Watchpoints
3066
3067A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3068expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3069tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3070quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3071problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3072more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3073
3074watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3075
3076info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3077
3078delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3079disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3080enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3081
3082
3083 * C++ multiple inheritance
3084
3085When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3086for C++ programs.
3087
3088 * C++ exception handling
3089
3090Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3091ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3092the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3093handler's context).
3094
3095catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3096 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3097 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3098
3099info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3100 current stack frame.
3101
3102
3103 * Minor command changes
3104
3105The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3106command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3107is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3108
3109The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3110at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3111frames without printing.
3112
3113 * New directory command
3114
3115'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3116The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3117about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3118with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3119find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3120
3121 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3122
3123For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3124for more details.
3125
3126GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3127two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3128Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3129where the program that you are debugging will run.