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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* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
7recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
8is not supported.
9
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10* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
11frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
12
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13* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1432-bit or 64-bit register values.
15
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16* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
17
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18* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
19target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
20a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
21
e1f48ead 22* Arrays of explicitly SIGNED or UNSIGNED CHARs are now printed as arrays
f8b73d13 23of numbers.
e1f48ead 24
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25* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
26for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
f8b73d13 27only ARM and MIPS).
123dc839 28
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29* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
30iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 31
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32* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
33ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
34has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
35
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36* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
37
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38* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
39
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40* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
41layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
42segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
43
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44* New commands
45
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46set remoteflow
47show remoteflow
48 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
49 when debugging using remote targets.
50
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51set mem inaccessible-by-default
52show mem inaccessible-by-default
53 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
54 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
55 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
56 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
57 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
58
59set breakpoint auto-hw
60show breakpoint auto-hw
61 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
62 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
63 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
64 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
65 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
66 including "next" and "finish".
67
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68catch exception
69catch exception unhandled
70 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
71
72catch assert
73 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
74
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75set sysroot
76show sysroot
77 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
78 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
79 an alias to "set sysroot".
80
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81info spu
82 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
83 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
84 architecture.
85
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86* New native configurations
87
88OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
89
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90set tdesc filename
91unset tdesc filename
92show tdesc filename
93 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
94 not query the target for its built-in description.
95
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96* New targets
97
54fe9172 98OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 99MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 100Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 101
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102* New remote packets
103
104QPassSignals:
105 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
106 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
107
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108qXfer:features:read:
109 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
110 features.
6dd09645 111
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112qXfer:spu:read:
113qXfer:spu:write:
114 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
115 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
116
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117* Removed targets
118
119Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
120
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121alpha*-*-osf1*
122alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 123d10v-*-*
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124hppa*-*-hiux*
125i[34567]86-ncr-*
126i[34567]86-*-dgux*
127i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
128i[34567]86-*-netware*
129i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
130i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
131i[34567]86-*-sco*
132i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
133i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
134i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
135i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
136i[34567]86-*-unixware*
137i[34567]86-*-sysv*
138i[34567]86-*-isc*
139m68*-cisco*-*
140m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 141mips*-*-pe
483367ee 142rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 143sh*-*-pe
483367ee 144
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145* Other removed features
146
147target abug
148target cpu32bug
149target est
150target rom68k
151
152 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
153
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154target hms
155target e7000
156target sh3
157target sh3e
158
159 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
160 H8/300.
161
162target ocd
163
164 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
165 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
166 interfaces.
167
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168DWARF 1 support
169
170 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
171 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
172
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173Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
174
175 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
176 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
177 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
178 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
179
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180MIPS ".pdr" sections
181
182 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
183 in debugging information.
184
185Scheme support
186
187 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
188 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
189
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190set mips stack-arg-size
191set mips saved-gpreg-size
192
193 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
194
6dd09645 195*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 196
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197* New targets
198
199Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 200Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 201
6aec2e11
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202* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
203(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
204running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
205
206* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
207Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
208supported.
209
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210* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
211broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
212
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213* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
214stub provides the required support.
215
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216* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
217longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
218
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219* New commands
220
221set substitute-path
222unset substitute-path
223show substitute-path
224 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
225 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
226 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
227 between compilation and debugging.
228
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229set trace-commands
230show trace-commands
231 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
232 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
233 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
234
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235* REMOVED features
236
237The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
238
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239Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
240an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
241
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242The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
243
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244* New remote packets
245
246qSupported:
247 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
248 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
249 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
250 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
251 target.
252
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253qXfer:auxv:read:
254 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
255 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
256
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257qXfer:memory-map:read:
258 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
259 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
260
261vFlashErase:
262vFlashWrite:
263vFlashDone:
264 Erase and program a flash memory device.
265
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266* Removed remote packets
267
268qPart:auxv:read:
269 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
270 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
271
e374b601 272*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 273
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MS
274* New targets
275
276Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
277
278Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
279
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280* New commands
281
282init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
283 only if it doesn't already have a value.
284
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285The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
286
287checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
288
289restart <n> Return the program state to a
290 previously saved state.
291
292info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
293
294delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
295
296set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
297 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
298
299info forks List forks of the user program that
300 are available to be debugged.
301
302fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
303 forks of the user program that are
304 available to be debugged.
305
306delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
307 that are available to be debugged (and
308 kill the forked process).
309
310detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
311 that are available to be debugged (and
312 allow the process to continue).
313
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314* New architecture
315
316Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
317
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318* Improved Windows host support
319
320GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
321native console support, and remote communications using either
322network sockets or serial ports.
323
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324* Improved Modula-2 language support
325
326GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
327basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
328pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
329printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
330written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
331GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
332
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333* REMOVED features
334
335The ARM rdi-share module.
336
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337The Netware NLM debug server.
338
53e5f3cf 339*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 340
e0ecbda1
MK
341* New native configurations
342
02a677ac 343OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
344OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
345
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346* New targets
347
348Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
349
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350* New command line options
351
352--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
353--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
354 the child (debugged) program exited with.
355--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
356 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
357 specified multiple times and in conjunction
358 with the --command (-x) option.
359
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360* Deprecated commands removed
361
362The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
363removed:
364
365 Command Replacement
366 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
367 othernames set arm disassembler
368 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
369 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
370 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
371 regs info registers
372
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MK
373* New BSD user-level threads support
374
375It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
376library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
377configurations are:
378
379FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
380FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
381OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
382
383Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
384are not yet supported.
385
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MS
386* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
387(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
388
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AC
389* REMOVED configurations and files
390
391VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 392Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 393National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 394
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JB
395* New "set print array-indexes" command
396
397After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
398when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
399behavior.
400
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401* VAX floating point support
402
403GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
404
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405* User-defined command support
406
407In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
408to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
409section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
410
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411*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
412
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413* New command line option
414
415GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
416debugging.
417
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418* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
419
420GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
421information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
422by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
423proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
424to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 425
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426* Internationalization
427
428When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
429internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
430continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
431
117ea3cf
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432* Ada
433
434Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
435implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
436into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
437
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AC
438* New native configurations
439
440GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
441
442* Remote 'p' packet
443
444GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
445packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
446
447* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
448
449GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
450The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
451features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
452i386 application).
453
454GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
455compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
456continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
457configurations:
458
459hppa-*-hpux
460ia64-*-aix
461mips-*-irix*
462*-*-lynx
463mips-*-linux-gnu
464sds protocol
465xdr protocol
466powerpc bdm protocol
467
468Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
469made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
470
471* OBSOLETE configurations and files
472
473Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
474been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
475configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
476permanently REMOVED.
477
478h8300-*-*
479mcore-*-*
480mn10300-*-*
481ns32k-*-*
482sh64-*-*
483v850-*-*
484
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AC
485*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
486
487* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
488
489When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
490heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
491been fixed.
492
493* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
494
495When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
496fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
497IRIX long double values).
498
499* VAX and "next"
500
501A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
502command. This problem has been fixed.
503
860660cb 504*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 505
0dea2468
AC
506* Fix for ``many threads''
507
508On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
509rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
510error message:
511
512 ptrace: No such process.
513 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
514
515This problem has been fixed.
516
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517* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
518
519Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
520GDB to dump core).
521
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522* New ``start'' command.
523
524This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
525
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526* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
527
528Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
529live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
530platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
531
532FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
533FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
534NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
535NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
536NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
537OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
538OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
539OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
540OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
541
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542* Signal trampoline code overhauled
543
544Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
545These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
546of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
547call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
548signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
549
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550Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
551features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
552include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 553
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554* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
555
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556* New native configurations
557
97dc871c 558GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 559OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
560OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
561OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 562OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 563NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 564OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 565
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566* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
567
568GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
569The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
570including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
571migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
572compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
573work, was also included.
574
575GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
576module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
577
578h8300-*-*
579mcore-*-*
580mn10300-*-*
581ns32k-*-*
582sh64-*-*
583v850-*-*
584xstormy16-*-*
585
586Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
587made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
588
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AC
589* REMOVED configurations and files
590
591Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
592Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
593Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
594Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
595Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
596AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
597Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
598decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
599riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
600sonymips mips-sony-*
601sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
602
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603*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
604
605* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
606
607The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
608GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
609command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
610program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
611with GDB".
612
613* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
614
615Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
616libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
617cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
618GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
619shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
620the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
621are created.
622
623Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
624
625* Fixed ISO-C build problems
626
627The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
628non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
629compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
630
631* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
632
633Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
634wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
635
636* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
637
638The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
639permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
640systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
641
642* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
643
644Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
645has been updated to use constant array sizes.
646
647* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
648
649GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
650its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
651panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
652
653* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
654
655When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
656by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
657not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
658
faae5abe 659*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 660
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MC
661* Removed --with-mmalloc
662
663Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
664conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
665
3cc87ec0
MK
666* Changes in AMD64 configurations
667
668The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
669the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
670and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
671you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
672
f0424ef6
MK
673* Revised SPARC target
674
675The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
676FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
677support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
678from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
679(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 680
59659be2
ILT
681* New C++ demangler
682
683GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
684names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
685with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
686programs.
687
9e08b29b
DJ
688* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
689
690GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
691arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
692encountered these.
693
8dfe8985
DC
694* C++ nested types and namespaces
695
696GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
697improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
698is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
699Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
700namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
701"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
702frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
703if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
704GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
705
cced5e27
MK
706* New native configurations
707
708NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 709OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 710OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
711OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
712OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 713
b4b4b794
KI
714* New debugging protocols
715
716M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
717
7989c619
AC
718* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
719
720The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
721and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
722tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
723
5994185b
AC
724* OBSOLETE configurations and files
725
726Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
727been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
728configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
729permanently REMOVED.
730
731Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
732Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
733Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
734Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
735Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
736AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
737Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
738decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
739riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
740sonymips mips-sony-*
741sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 742
0ddabb4c
AC
743* REMOVED configurations and files
744
745SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
746SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
747Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
748Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
749H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
750HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
751HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
752HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
753PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 754386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
755Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
756 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
757 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
758SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
759SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
760Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
761Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 762
c7f1390e
DJ
763*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
764
1fe43d45
AC
765* Objective-C
766
767Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
768integrated into GDB.
769
e6beb428
AC
770* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
771
772DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
773information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
774By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
775backtraces.
776
777The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
778have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
779DWARF 2 CFI support.
780
781* Hosted file I/O.
782
783GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
784file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
785remote protocol documentation for details.
786
787* All targets using the new architecture framework.
788
789All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
790architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
791to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
792ppc32 on ppc64).
793
794* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
795
796GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
797per-thread variables.
798
799* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
800
801GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
802GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
803
804* Separate debug info.
805
806GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
807automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
808of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
809system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
810and optional debug files.
811
812* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
813
814DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
815describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
816debugger.
817
818GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
819for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
820
821* Java
822
823A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
824Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
825considered "useable".
826
85f8f974
DJ
827* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
828
829The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
830commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
831kernel.
832
0fac0b41
DJ
833* GDB supports logging output to a file
834
835There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
836used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 837
6ad8ae5c
DJ
838* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
839
840The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
841disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
842command.
843
e286caf2 844* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
845
846The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
847registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
848
d28f9cdf
DJ
849* Profiling support
850
851A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
852be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
853session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
854"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
855data, for more informative profiling results.
856
da0f9dcd
AC
857* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
858
859The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
860option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 861"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
862
863Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
864removed.
865
fb9b6b35
JJ
866Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
867Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
868Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
869 in a subsequent -var-update.
870
954a4db8
MK
871* New native configurations.
872
873FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
874
6760f9e6
JB
875* Multi-arched targets.
876
b4263afa 877HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 878Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 879
1b831c93
AC
880* OBSOLETE configurations and files
881
882Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
883been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
884configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
885permanently REMOVED.
886
8b0e5691 887Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 888Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 889H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
890HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
891HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
892HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 893PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
894Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
895 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
896 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
897Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
898Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 899
5835abe7
NC
900* REMOVED configurations and files
901
902V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
903Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
904IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
905i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
906i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
907i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
908HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
909 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
910 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
911Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
912Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
913Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
914OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
915I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 916
a094c6fb
AC
917* MIPS $fp behavior changed
918
919The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
920the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
921context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
922address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
923The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
924
299ffc64 925*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 926
46248966
AC
927* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
928
929When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
930`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
931in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
932library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
933shared libs like mad''.
934
b9d14705 935* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 936
b9d14705
DJ
937Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
938the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
939arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
940powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 941
e0e9281e
JB
942* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
943
944GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
945and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
946they expand.
947
dd73b9bb
AC
948The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
949invocations in expression, and shows the result.
950
951The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
952macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
953
e0e9281e
JB
954Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
955information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
956your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
957information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
958
2250ee0c
CV
959* Multi-arched targets.
960
6e3ba3b8
JT
961DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
962DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 963NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 964National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
965Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
966Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 967
cd9bfe15 968* New targets.
e33ce519 969
456f8b9d
DB
970Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
971
e33ce519 972
da8ca43d
JT
973* New native configurations
974
975Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 976SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 977MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 978UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 979
cd9bfe15
AC
980* OBSOLETE configurations and files
981
982Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
983been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
984configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
985permanently REMOVED.
986
92eb23c5 987Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 988OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 989IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 990Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 991Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 992Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
993i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
994i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
995i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
996HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
997 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
998 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 999I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1000
db034ac5
AC
1001* OBSOLETE languages
1002
1003CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1004
cd9bfe15
AC
1005* REMOVED configurations and files
1006
1007AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1008A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1009AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1010AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1011AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1012
1013testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1014
20f01a46
DH
1015* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1016
1017This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1018commands. The default is 1024.
1019
a5941fbf
MK
1020* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1021
1022Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1023
89743e04
MS
1024* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1025
1026These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1027to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1028from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1029
9fb14e79
JB
1030* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1031
1032The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1033including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1034of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1035
2037aebb
AC
1036*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1037
1038* New targets.
1039
1040Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1041
1042* Bug fixes
1043
1044gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1045mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1046Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1047
1048gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1049dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1050Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1051
1052Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1053Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1054By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1055
1056i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1057avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1058By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1059
37057839 1060*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1061
1a703748
MS
1062* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1063
1064This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1065really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1066In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1067target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1068This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1069(notably embedded) targets.
1070
cefd4ef5
MS
1071* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1072
55241689
AC
1073This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1074process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1075GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1076hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1077
352ed7b4
MS
1078* New command line option
1079
1080GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1081
1082* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1083
1084There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1085command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1086a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1087be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1088open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1089issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1090a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1091it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1092GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1093is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1094
fe419ffc
RE
1095* Changes in ARM configurations.
1096
1097Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1098configuration is fully multi-arch.
1099
eb7cedd9
MK
1100* New native configurations
1101
fe419ffc 1102ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1103x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1104AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1105Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1106
c9f63e6b
CV
1107* New targets
1108
1109Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1110
9b4ff276
AC
1111* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1112
1113Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1114been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1115configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1116permanently REMOVED.
1117
1118AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1119A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1120AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1121AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1122AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1123
b4ceaee6 1124testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1125
e2caac18
AC
1126* REMOVED configurations and files
1127
1128TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1129WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1130PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1131PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1132PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1133Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1134Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1135 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1136SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1137Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1138Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1139ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1140Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1141
c2a727fa
TT
1142* Changes to command line processing
1143
1144The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1145for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1146
467d8519
TT
1147* Changes to key bindings
1148
1149There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1150
7072a954
AC
1151*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1152
1153Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1154
1155Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1156corrupted.
1157
1158Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1159
1160Numerous documentation fixes.
1161
1162Numerous testsuite fixes.
1163
34f47bc4 1164*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1165
1166* New native configurations
1167
1168Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1169x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1170MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1171MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1172ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1173s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1174
bf64bfd6
AC
1175* New targets
1176
def90278 1177Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1178CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1179UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1180
17e78a56 1181* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1182
1183x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1184Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1185Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1186 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1187TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1188WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1189Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1190PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1191PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1192PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1193SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1194Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1195ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1196Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1197
17e78a56
AC
1198stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1199kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1200
7fcca85b
AC
1201Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1202been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1203configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1204permanently REMOVED.
1205
a196c81c 1206* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1207
1208Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1209Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1210Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1211ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1212Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1213ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1214
6d6b80e5 1215* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1216
6d6b80e5 1217GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1218sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1219present.
1220
bf64bfd6
AC
1221* Other news:
1222
e23194cb
EZ
1223* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1224
1225* The MI enabled by default.
1226
1227The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1228revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1229engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1230using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1231which is now deprecated.
1232
1233* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1234
1235GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1236main features are supported:
1237
1238 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1239
1240 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1241 extension;
1242
1243 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1244
1245 - a Pascal expression parser.
1246
1247However, some important features are not yet supported.
1248
1249 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1250
1251 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1252
1253 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1254 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1255
1256 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1257
1258 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1259
1260* Changes in completion.
1261
1262Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1263to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1264users expect at the shell prompt.
1265
1266Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1267`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1268program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1269files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1270be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1271considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1272name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1273
1274`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1275
1276* New platform-independent commands:
1277
1278It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1279hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1280documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1281
1282* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1283
d7275149
MK
1284Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1285revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1286many threads as your system allows you to have.
1287
e23194cb
EZ
1288Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1289
d7275149
MK
1290Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1291multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1292
1293* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1294
1295Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1296
e23194cb
EZ
1297GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1298debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1299supported.)
1300
1301* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1302
1303Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1304breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1305implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1306put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1307and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1308registers.
1309
1310The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1311debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1312watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1313
1314* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1315
1316New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1317the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1318
1319New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1320display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1321IDT.
1322
1323New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1324from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1325New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1326a given linear address.
1327
1328GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1329program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1330which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1331
1332DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1333
6c56c069
EZ
1334It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1335
e23194cb
EZ
1336* Changes in documentation.
1337
1338All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1339Documentation License.
1340
1341Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1342manual.
1343
1344TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1345
1346Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1347manual.
1348
1349The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1350documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1351hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1352
5d6640b1
AC
1353* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1354
1355The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1356``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1357contents of this file.
1358
1a1d8446
AC
1359* gdba.el deleted
1360
1361GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1362
9debab2f 1363*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1364
c63ce875
EZ
1365* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1366
1367Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1368programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1369displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1370greater level of detail.
1371
1372* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1373
1374It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1375bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1376on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1377written.
1378
1379* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1380
1381The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1382necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1383machines ``out of the box''.
1384
1385The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1386possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1387signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1388would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1389interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1390
1391It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1392standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1393even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1394and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1395terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1396
1397The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1398enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1399also works.
1400
1401DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1402GDB.
1403
1404It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1405directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1406times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1407breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1408
ed9a39eb
JM
1409* New native configurations
1410
1411ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1412PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1413
7a292a7a
SS
1414* New targets
1415
96baa820 1416Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1417x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1418PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1419TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1420
085dd6e6
JM
1421* OBSOLETE configurations
1422
1423Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1424Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1425Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1426ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1427Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1428
9debab2f
AC
1429Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1430but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1431these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1432be permanently REMOVED.
1433
5330533d
SS
1434* Gould support removed
1435
1436Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1437
bc9e5bbf
AC
1438* New features for SVR4
1439
1440On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1441without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1442load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1443
1444* Many C++ enhancements
1445
1446C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1447in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1448
adf40b2e
JM
1449* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1450
1451A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1452sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1453with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1454``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1455
1456 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1457 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1458
43e526b9
JM
1459* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1460
1461A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1462expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1463instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1464
1465The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1466added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1467
96baa820
JM
1468* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1469
1470The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1471``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1472include ``set remote P-packet''.
1473
11cf8741
JM
1474* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1475
1476The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1477accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1478``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1479
7876dd43
DB
1480* ``apropos'' command added.
1481
1482The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1483documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1484try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1485
bc9e5bbf
AC
1486* New MI interface
1487
1488A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1489interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1490process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1491"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1492enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1493
1494 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1495
c906108c
SS
1496*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1497
1498* New native configurations
1499
1500HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1501HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1502M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1503
1504* New targets
1505
1506Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1507Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1508Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1509
1510* OBSOLETE configurations
1511
1512Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1513
1514Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1515but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1516these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1517be permanently REMOVED.
1518
1519* ANSI/ISO C
1520
1521As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1522buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1523containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1524use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1525available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1526configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1527information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1528already.
1529
1530* Readline 2.2
1531
1532GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1533
1534* set extension-language
1535
1536You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1537languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1538you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1539 set extension-language .c c++
1540The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1541and their associated languages.
1542
1543* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1544
1545When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1546you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1547PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1548
1549 set processor NAME
1550
1551sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1552following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1553
1554 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1555 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1556 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1557 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1558 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1559 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1560 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1561 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1562 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1563 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1564 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1565
1566At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1567special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1568registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1569only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1570
1571* HP-UX support
1572
1573Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1574more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1575library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1576support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1577for xdb and dbx commands.
1578
1579* Catchpoints
1580
1581HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1582generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1583to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1584
1585This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1586argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1587output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1588
1589* Debugging across forks
1590
1591On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1592in the inferior.
1593
1594* TUI
1595
1596HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1597it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1598configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1599
1600* GDB remote protocol additions
1601
1602A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1603Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1604fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1605allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1606
1607For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1608full 64-bit address. The command
1609
1610 set remoteaddresssize 32
1611
1612can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1613the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1614will be discarded.
1615
1616In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1617command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1618
1619 maint packet heythere
1620
1621sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1622disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1623time.
1624
1625The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1626target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1627downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1628
1629* Tracing can collect general expressions
1630
1631You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1632further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1633doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1634
1635* mask-address variable for Mips
1636
1637For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1638a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1639of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1640
1641* Higher serial baud rates
1642
1643GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1644230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1645to achieve all of these rates.)
1646
1647* i960 simulator
1648
1649The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1650builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1651
1652
1653*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1654
1655* New native configurations
1656
1657Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1658Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1659Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1660PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1661PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1662Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1663Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1664
1665* New targets
1666
1667Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1668Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1669Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1670Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1671MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1672MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1673MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1674Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1675Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1676Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1677NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1678
1679* New debugging protocols
1680
1681ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1682M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1683DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1684PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1685PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1686Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1687
1688* DWARF 2
1689
1690All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1691format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1692information.
1693
1694* Java frontend
1695
1696GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1697only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1698
1699* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1700
1701For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1702loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1703locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1704
1705* Live range splitting
1706
1707GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1708range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1709more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1710
1711* Hurd support
1712
1713GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1714updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1715
1716* ARM Thumb support
1717
1718GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1719instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1720instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1721accordingly.
1722
1723* MIPS16 support
1724
1725GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1726instruction set.
1727
1728* Overlay support
1729
1730GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1731linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1732will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1733control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1734additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1735in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1736
1737* info symbol
1738
1739The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1740the symbol at the specified address.
1741
1742* Trace support
1743
1744The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1745asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1746extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1747includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1748file tracepoint.c for more details.
1749
1750* MIPS simulator
1751
1752Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1753by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1754of most MIPS variants.
1755
1756* Sparc simulator
1757
1758Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1759by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1760Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1761
1762* set architecture
1763
1764For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1765basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1766architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1767the possible architectures.
1768
1769*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1770
1771* New native configurations
1772
1773Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1774M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1775PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1776PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1777PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1778RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1779
1780* New targets
1781
1782ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1783I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1784MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1785MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1786PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1787Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1788Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1789
1790* PowerPC simulator
1791
1792The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1793contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1794PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1795basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1796performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1797
1798* Solaris 2.5
1799
1800GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1801
1802* Windows 95/NT native
1803
1804GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1805To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1806which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1807Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1808ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1809
1810* dont-repeat command
1811
1812If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1813command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1814useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1815extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1816
1817* Send break instead of ^C
1818
1819The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1820rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1821GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1822
1823* Remote protocol timeout
1824
1825The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1826that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1827to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1828
1829* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1830
1831By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1832loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1833stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1834when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1835in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1836
1837Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1838/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1839automatically on hpux10.
1840
1841* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1842
1843Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1844
1845* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1846
1847When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1848may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1849the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1850every character. The default value is 1050.
1851
1852* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1853
1854If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1855a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1856replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1857details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1858remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1859to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1860
1861* Speedups for remote debugging
1862
1863GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1864the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1865and more efficient S-record downloading.
1866
1867* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1868
1869GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1870Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1871
1872*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1873
1874* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1875
1876The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1877can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1878
1879* Remote targets use caching
1880
1881Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1882remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1883it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1884debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1885off' turns the the data cache off.
1886
1887* Remote targets may have threads
1888
1889The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1890in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1891gdb/remote.c for details.
1892
1893* NetROM support
1894
1895If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1896support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1897acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1898write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1899support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1900another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1901sequence is something like
1902
1903 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1904 load <prog>
1905 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1906
1907* Macintosh host
1908
1909GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1910may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1911it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1912available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1913device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1914directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1915scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1916mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1917
1918* Autoconf
1919
1920GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1921but does simplify configuration and building.
1922
1923* hpux10
1924
1925GDB now supports hpux10.
1926
1927*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1928
1929* New native configurations
1930
1931x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1932x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1933NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1934Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1935
1936* New targets
1937
1938A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1939HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1940CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1941PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1942WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1943
1944* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1945
1946GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1947possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1948filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1949the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1950if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1951
1952* Arguments to user-defined commands
1953
1954User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1955Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1956trivial example:
1957define adder
1958 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1959
1960To execute the command use:
1961adder 1 2 3
1962
1963Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1964Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1965use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1966
1967* New `if' and `while' commands
1968
1969This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1970commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1971expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1972execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1973terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1974`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1975if the expression is zero.
1976
1977* Fortran source language mode
1978
1979GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1980Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1981variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1982with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1983Fortran compilers.
1984
1985* Better HPUX support
1986
1987Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1988running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1989processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1990for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1991that behavior do the following before running the program:
1992
1993 adb -w a.out
1994 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1995 control-d
1996
1997This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1998To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1999
2000 adb -w a.out
2001 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2002 control-d
2003
2004You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2005the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2006external linkage.
2007
2008GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2009HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2010
2011* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2012
2013You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2014commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2015current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2016"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2017associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2018configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2019
2020* New DOS host serial code
2021
2022This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2023no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2024a PC's serial port.
2025
2026*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2027
2028* New "complete" command
2029
2030This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2031were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2032
2033* Trailing space optional in prompt
2034
2035"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2036allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2037
2038* Breakpoint hit counts
2039
2040"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2041has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2042can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2043to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2044less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2045that breakpoint.
2046
2047* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2048
2049"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2050an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2051arrays actually contain only short strings.
2052
2053* Shared library breakpoints
2054
2055In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2056breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2057
2058* Hardware watchpoints
2059
2060There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2061targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2062
55241689 2063Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2064
2065* Annotations
2066
2067Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2068and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2069
2070* Improved Irix 5 support
2071
2072GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2073
2074* Improved HPPA support
2075
2076GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2077
2078* New native configurations
2079
2080Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2081HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2082Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2083RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2084
2085* New targets
2086
2087OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2088MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2089Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2090
2091* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2092
2093There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2094This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2095
2096* Fixes
2097
2098As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2099and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2100
2101*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2102
2103* Irix 5 is now supported
2104
2105* HPPA support
2106
2107GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2108to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2109GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2110of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2111can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2112
2113
2114*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2115
2116* User visible changes:
2117
2118* Remote Debugging
2119
2120The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2121target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2122debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2123integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2124debugging info for the mips target).
2125
2126* DEC Alpha native support
2127
2128GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2129debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2130work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2131Alpha-specific notes.
2132
2133* Preliminary thread implementation
2134
2135GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2136
2137* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2138
2139This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2140to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2141for details).
2142
2143* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2144
2145This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2146mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2147call methods, ...etc.
2148
2149*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2150
2151 * User visible changes:
2152
2153Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2154supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2155other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2156somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2157
2158Filename completion now works.
2159
2160When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2161arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2162addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2163
2164All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2165vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2166should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2167your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2168to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2169
2170 * DEC alpha support
2171
2172This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2173cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2174
2175
2176*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2177
2178 * Testsuite
2179
2180This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2181The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2182via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2183
2184 * C++ demangling
2185
2186'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2187emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2188Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2189disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2190use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2191
2192 * Simulators
2193
2194GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2195So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2196Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2197
2198 * New targets supported
2199
2200H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2201H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2202SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2203Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2204IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2205
2206Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2207version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2208GO32 memory extender.
2209
2210 * New remote protocols
2211
2212MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2213
2214 * New source languages supported
2215
2216This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2217used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2218into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2219
2220
2221*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2222
2223 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2224
2225GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2226version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2227University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2228compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2229format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2230(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2231
2232Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2233
2234 * Faster and better demangling
2235
2236We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2237demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2238character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2239only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2240This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2241increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2242symbol lookups.
2243
2244`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2245from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2246compiler does not actually implement.
2247
2248 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2249
2250In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2251inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2252recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2253very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2254The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2255circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2256fix.
2257
2258The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2259release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2260
2261 * Improved configure script
2262
2263The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2264you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2265host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2266done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2267
2268We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2269version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2270`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2271The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2272only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2273We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2274
2275 * Documentation improvements
2276
2277There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2278produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2279before submitting changes.
2280
2281The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2282M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2283`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2284you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2285a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2286
2287*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2288We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2289been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2290or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2291`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2292around this problem.
2293
2294 * New features
2295
2296GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2297the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2298`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2299the target program.
2300
2301The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2302how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2303
2304 * New native hosts supported
2305
2306HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2307386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2308
2309 * New targets supported
2310
2311AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2312
2313 * New file formats supported
2314
2315BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2316HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2317
2318 * Major bug fixes
2319
2320Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2321
2322We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2323printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2324
2325We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2326for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2327release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2328
2329You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2330will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2331
2332We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2333for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2334especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2335libraries.
2336
2337The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2338information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2339command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2340any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2341when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2342
2343 * Internal improvements
2344
2345GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2346debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2347
2348GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2349Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2350symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2351contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2352shared code that handles any of them.
2353
2354 * New command line options
2355
2356We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2357
2358 * Mmalloc licensing
2359
2360The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2361General Public License.
2362
2363*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2364
2365 * Host/native/target split
2366
2367GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2368hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2369target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2370local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2371ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2372
2373The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2374GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2375is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2376code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2377any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2378built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2379handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2380
2381GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2382It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2383plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2384
2385 * New hosts supported
2386
2387HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2388386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2389386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2390
2391 * New targets supported
2392
2393Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
239468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2395
2396 * New native hosts supported
2397
2398386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2399 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2400386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2401
2402 * New file formats supported
2403
2404BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2405supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2406format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2407
2408 * New commands
2409
2410`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2411`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2412These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2413
2414`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2415
2416You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2417scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2418prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2419executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2420
2421 * C++ improvements
2422
2423We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2424info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2425symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2426
2427Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2428
2429 * Major bug fixes
2430
2431The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2432fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2433by the compiler.
2434
2435We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2436support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2437
2438John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2439slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2440that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2441purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2442the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2443mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2444
2445Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2446about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2447completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2448we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2449
2450 * AMD 29k support
2451
2452A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2453specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2454calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2455usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2456in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2457
2458We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2459Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2460of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2461resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2462
2463 * Remote interfaces
2464
2465We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2466with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2467message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2468This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2469needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2470breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2471each instruction being stepped through.
2472
2473The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2474registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2475
2476There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2477find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2478Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2479processor with a serial port.
2480
2481 * Configuration
2482
2483Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2484`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2485supported, and what files each one uses.
2486
2487 * Library changes
2488
2489There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2490disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2491Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2492disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2493
2494The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2495Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2496can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2497grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2498
2499 * Documentation
2500
2501The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2502reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2503as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2504encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2505system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2506bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2507
2508And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2509
2510
2511*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2512
2513 * Better support for C++ function names
2514
2515GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2516names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2517(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2518single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2519Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2520
2521GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2522the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2523You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2524lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2525for the list of formats.
2526
2527 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2528
2529Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2530C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2531directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2532can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2533usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2534about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2535this problem.)
2536
2537 * New 'maintenance' command
2538
2539All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2540the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2541can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2542
2543 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2544 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2545 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2546 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2547 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2548 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2549
2550The following commands are new:
2551
2552 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2553 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2554 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2555
2556 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2557
2558We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2559(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2560be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2561read after argv processing.
2562
2563 * New hosts supported
2564
2565Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2566
55241689 2567GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2568
2569We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2570is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2571for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2572masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2573fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2574It costs extra.
2575
2576 * New targets supported
2577
2578Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2579
2580 * More smarts about finding #include files
2581
2582GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2583all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2584greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2585especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2586the one that contains your sources.
2587
2588We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2589breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2590try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2591
2592 * Interesting infernals change
2593
2594GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2595section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2596target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2597stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2598
2599 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2600
2601There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2602 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2603 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2604
2605See the ChangeLog for details.
2606
2607*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2608
2609 * New machines supported (host and target)
2610
2611IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2612
2613SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2614
2615 * New malloc package
2616
2617GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2618Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2619capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2620This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2621pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2622more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2623
2624 * info proc
2625
2626The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2627'help info proc' for details.
2628
2629 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2630
2631The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2632Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2633possible.
2634
2635 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2636
2637Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2638support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2639conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2640environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2641that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2642in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2643
2644 * Cross byte order fixes
2645
2646Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2647targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2648
2649 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2650
2651If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2652system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2653`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2654program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2655called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2656Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2657and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2658the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2659option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2660starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2661
2662You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2663the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2664information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2665slower, but makes future operations faster.
2666
2667The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2668build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2669A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2670use is:
2671
2672 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2673
2674The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2675It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2676shared across multiple host platforms.
2677
2678 * longjmp() handling
2679
2680GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2681siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2682all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2683platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2684
2685 * Solaris 2.0
2686
2687Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2688this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2689reading symbols.
2690
2691 * Bug fixes
2692
2693As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2694People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2695crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2696
2697*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2698
2699 * New machines supported (host and target)
2700
2701SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2702 (except core files)
2703BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2704Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2705
2706 * New machines supported (target)
2707
2708AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2709
2710 * C++ support
2711
2712GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2713The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2714per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2715
2716GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2717`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2718extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2719good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2720will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2721released.
2722
2723 * New features for SVR4
2724
2725GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2726shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2727only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2728
2729The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2730on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2731it prints the address mappings of the process.
2732
2733If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2734bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2735
2736 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2737
2738Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2739now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2740skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2741make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2742same code linked statically.
2743
2744 * New Getopt
2745
2746GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2747version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2748continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2749Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2750added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2751future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2752
2753 * Bugs fixed
2754
2755The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2756Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2757See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2758
2759
2760*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2761
2762 * New machines supported (host and target)
2763
2764Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2765NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2766Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2767
2768 * Almost SCO Unix support
2769
2770We had hoped to support:
2771SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2772(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2773that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2774about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2775
2776 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2777
2778GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2779debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2780is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2781send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2782reqired (if any).
2783
2784 * New Readline
2785
2786GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2787is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2788required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2789
2790 * Bugs fixed
2791
2792The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2793Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2794See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2795
2796 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2797
2798GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2799supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2800symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2801
2802Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2803mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2804debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2805mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2806version 2.
2807
2808Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2809really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2810line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2811variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2812situation somewhat.
2813
2814When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2815However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2816methods.
2817
2818We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2819DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2820encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2821
2822
2823*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2824
2825 * Improved configuration
2826
2827Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2828Porting BFD is simpler.
2829
2830 * Stepping improved
2831
2832The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2833of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2834in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2835function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2836
2837 * Bug fixing
2838
2839Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2840
2841 * New host supported (not target)
2842
2843Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2844
2845
2846*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2847
2848 * Multiple source language support
2849
2850GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2851It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2852and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2853language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2854You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2855`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2856
2857 * GDB and Modula-2
2858
2859GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2860currently under development at the State University of New York at
2861Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2862continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2863
2864Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2865debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2866symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2867
2868There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2869in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2870
2871 * set write on/off
2872
2873GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2874a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2875the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2876by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2877effect immediately.
2878
2879 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2880
2881When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2882shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2883The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2884examining core files.
2885
2886 * set listsize
2887
2888You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2889The default is 10.
2890
2891 * New machines supported (host and target)
2892
2893SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2894Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2895Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2896
2897 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2898
2899IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2900
2901 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2902
2903AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2904AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2905Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2906
2907 * New remote interfaces
2908
2909AMD 29000 Adapt
2910AMD 29000 Minimon
2911
2912
2913*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2914
2915 * New Facilities
2916
2917Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2918
2919Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2920target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2921is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2922remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2923remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2924also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2925using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2926stub on the target system.
2927
2928New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2929
2930GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2931library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2932object file types such as a.out and coff.
2933
2934There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2935refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2936
2937
2938 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2939
2940All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2941by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2942
2943For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2944``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2945Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2946
2947What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2948print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2949will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2950all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2951
2952confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2953 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2954 it is already running. Default is ON.
2955
2956editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2957 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2958 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2959 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2960 Default is ON.
2961
2962history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2963 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2964 or the value of the environment variable
2965 GDBHISTFILE.
2966
2967history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2968 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2969 HISTSIZE.
2970
2971history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2972 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2973 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2974
2975history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2976 history expansion will be performed on
2977 command line input. The default is OFF.
2978
2979radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2980 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2981 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2982
2983height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2984 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2985 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2986 variable TERM.
2987
2988width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2989 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2990 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2991 variable TERM.
2992
2993Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2994``set width'' instead.
2995
2996print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2997 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2998 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2999 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3000
3001print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3002 is OFF.
3003
3004print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3005 "raw" form if off.
3006
3007print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3008 like instructions.
3009
3010print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3011
3012
3013 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3014
3015The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3016new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3017are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3018window.
3019
3020
3021 * Support for Shared Libraries
3022
3023GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3024Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3025before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3026happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3027At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3028from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3029shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3030It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3031
3032sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3033 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3034 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3035
3036info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3037
3038
3039 * Watchpoints
3040
3041A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3042expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3043tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3044quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3045problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3046more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3047
3048watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3049
3050info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3051
3052delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3053disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3054enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3055
3056
3057 * C++ multiple inheritance
3058
3059When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3060for C++ programs.
3061
3062 * C++ exception handling
3063
3064Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3065ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3066the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3067handler's context).
3068
3069catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3070 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3071 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3072
3073info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3074 current stack frame.
3075
3076
3077 * Minor command changes
3078
3079The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3080command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3081is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3082
3083The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3084at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3085frames without printing.
3086
3087 * New directory command
3088
3089'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3090The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3091about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3092with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3093find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3094
3095 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3096
3097For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3098for more details.
3099
3100GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3101two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3102Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3103where the program that you are debugging will run.