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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.5
5
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6* New command line options:
7
8-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
9 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
10
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11* Python scripting
12
13 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
14
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15 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
16
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17* New Python-based convenience functions:
18
19 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
20 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
21 ** $_strlen(str)
22 ** $_regex(str, regex)
23
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24* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
25 given an argument.
26
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27* New configure options
28
29--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
30 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
31 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
32 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
33 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
34 options allow the user to override that default.
35
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36* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
37
38maint info bfds
39 List the BFDs known to GDB.
40
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41python-interactive [command]
42pi [command]
43 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
44 and print the result of expressions.
45
46py [command]
47 "py" is a new alias for "python".
48
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49* Removed commands
50
51 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
52 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
53 instead.
54
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55* MI changes
56
57 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
58 "=cmd-param-changed".
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59 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
60 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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61 ** The creation and deletion of trace state variables are now notified
62 using new async records "=tsv-created" and "=tsv-deleted".
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63 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
64 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
5b9afe8a 65
80c8d323 66*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 67
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68* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
69 for more x32 ABI info.
70
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71* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
72
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73* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
74
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75* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
76 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
77 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
78 "info os files" lists file descriptors
79 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
80 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
81 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
82 "info os msg" lists message queues
83 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
84
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85* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
86 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
87 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
88 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
89 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
90 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
91
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92* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
93 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
94 record/replay support.
95
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96* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
97
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98* Python scripting
99
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100 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
101 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
102
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103 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
104
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105 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
106 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
107
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108 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
109
110 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
111 the source at which the symbol was defined.
112
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113 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
114 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
115 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
116 symbol's value.
117
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118 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
119 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
120
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121 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
122 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
123 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
124
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125 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
126 object associated with a PC value.
127
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128 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
129 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
130
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131* Go language support.
132 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
133 language.
134
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135* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
136 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
137
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138* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
139 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
140
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141* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
142 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
143 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
144 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
145 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
146 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
147
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148* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
149 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
150 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
151 build/libcpp/expr.c.
152
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153* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
154 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
155
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156* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
157 since December 2007.
158
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159* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
160 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
161 command does. For instance:
162
163 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
164
165 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
166 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
167 created, using the "condition" command.
168
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169* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
170 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
171
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172* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
173
174* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
175 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
176 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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177 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
178 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
179 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
180 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
181 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 182
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183 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
184 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
185 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
186 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
187 the .gdb_index section.
188
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189* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
190
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191* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
192 target.
193
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194* MI changes
195
196 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
197
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198 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
199
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200* New commands
201
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202 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
203 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
204 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
205
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206 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
207 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
208
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209 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
210 several hits.
211
57651221 212 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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213 C++ and Java objects.
214
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215 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
216 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
217 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
218 configured with '--with-python'.
219
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220 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
221 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
222 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
223 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
224 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
225 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
226 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
227
228 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
229 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
230 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
231 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
232
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233 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
234 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
235 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
236 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
237
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238 ** "set print symbol"
239 "show print symbol"
240 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
241 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
242 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
243
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244* Deprecated commands
245
246 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
247 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
248
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249* New targets
250
251Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 252HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 253
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254* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
255 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
256 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
257 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
258 evaluates to true.
259
260* New options
261
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262set mips compression
263show mips compression
264 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
265 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
266 mips16
267 micromips
268 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
269
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270set breakpoint condition-evaluation
271show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 272 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
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273 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
274 available mode.
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275 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
276 target.
277
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278set auto-load off
279 Disable auto-loading globally.
280
281show auto-load
282 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
283
284set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
285show auto-load gdb-scripts
286 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
287
288set auto-load python-scripts on|off
289show auto-load python-scripts
290 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
291
292set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
293show auto-load local-gdbinit
294 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
295
296set auto-load libthread-db on|off
297show auto-load libthread-db
298 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
299
7349ff92 300set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 301show auto-load scripts-directory
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302 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
303 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
304 of the directories listed by this option.
305 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
306
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307set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
308show auto-load safe-path
309 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
310 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
311
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312set debug auto-load on|off
313show debug auto-load
314 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
315
d3ce09f5 316set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 317show dprintf-style
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318 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
319 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
320 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
321 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
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322
323set dprintf-function <expr>
324show dprintf-function
325set dprintf-channel <expr>
326show dprintf-channel
327 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
328 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
329
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330set disconnected-dprintf on|off
331show disconnected-dprintf
332 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
333 after GDB disconnects.
334
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335* New configure options
336
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337--with-auto-load-dir
338 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
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339 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
340 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
341 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
342 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 343
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344--with-auto-load-safe-path
345 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 346 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
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347
348--without-auto-load-safe-path
349 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
350 security feature.
351
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352* New remote packets
353
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354z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
355
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356 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
357 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
358 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
359 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
360
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361QProgramSignals:
362
363 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
364 program without GDB involvement.
365
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366* New command line options
367
368--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
369 before loading inferior.
370--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
371 execute it before loading inferior.
372
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373*** Changes in GDB 7.4
374
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375* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
376 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
377 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
378 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
379 inferior changes.
380
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381* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
382 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
383
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384* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
385 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
386 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
387 target hardware watchpoint.
388
389 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
390 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
391 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
392 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
393
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394* Python scripting
395
32d1c362 396 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 397 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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398 existing one.
399
3a7bf607 400 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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401 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
402 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
403 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
404 now "message", which just prints the error message without
405 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 406
baacfb07 407 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 408 Python API.
713389e0 409
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410 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
411 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 412 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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413 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
414 corresponding value.
415
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416 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
417 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
418 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
419 on GDB start-up.
420
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421 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
422 static_block will return the global and static blocks
423 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
424 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
425
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426 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
427
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428 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
429 "gdb.breakpoints".
430
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431 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
432 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
433 available in the CLI.
434
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435 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
436 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
437 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
438 "some_type.items()".
439
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440 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
441 new object file.
442
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443 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
444 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
445 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
446 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
447 any anonymous fields.
448
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449* MI changes
450
451 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
452 "solib-event".
453
454 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
455 "=breakpoint-modified".
456
457 ** New command -ada-task-info.
458
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459* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
460 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
461 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
462 lives.
463
464 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
465 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
466 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
467 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
468 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
469
470 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
471 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
472
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473* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
474 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
475 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
476 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
477 use this option to specify where to find it.
478
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479* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
480 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
481 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
482 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
483 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
484 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
485 section in the user manual for more details.
486
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487* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
488 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
489 become available after that.
490
71eba9c2 491* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 492
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493* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
494 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
495 gcc version 4.7.
496
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497* New commands
498
499!SHELL COMMAND
500 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
501 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
502
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503* Changed commands
504
505watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
506 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
507 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
508
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509info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
510 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
511 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
512
71eba9c2 513info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
514 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
515 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
516 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
517 name starts with a hyphen.
518
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519collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
520 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
521 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
522 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
523 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
524 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
525 number of bytes that will be collected.
526
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527tstart [NOTES]
528 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
529 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
530 setting the variable trace-notes.
531
532tstop [NOTES]
533 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
534 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
535 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
536 trace-stop-notes.
537
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538* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
539 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
540 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
541 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
542 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
543 is running.
544
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545* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
546 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
547 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
548
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549* New options
550
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551set debug dwarf2-read
552show debug dwarf2-read
553 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
554 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
555
556set debug symtab-create
557show debug symtab-create
558 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
559 creation. The default is off.
560
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561set extended-prompt
562show extended-prompt
563 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
564 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
565 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
566 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
567 prompt is displayed.
568
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569set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
570show print entry-values
571 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
572 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
573 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
574
575set debug entry-values
576show debug entry-values
577 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
578 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
579
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580set basenames-may-differ
581show basenames-may-differ
582 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
583 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
584 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
585 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
586 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
587 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
588 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
589 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
590
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SS
591set trace-user
592show trace-user
593set trace-notes
594show trace-notes
595 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
596 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
597 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
598 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
599
600set trace-stop-notes
601show trace-stop-notes
602 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
603 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
604 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
605 started by someone else.
606
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KY
607* New remote packets
608
609QTEnable
610
611 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
612
613QTDisable
614
615 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
616
f196051f
SS
617QTNotes
618
619 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
620
621qTP
622
623 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
624
405f8e94
SS
625qTMinFTPILen
626
627 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
628 be placed.
629
1a532630
PP
630* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
631 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
632
11315641
YQ
633* New targets
634
635Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
636
87326c78
DD
637* New Simulators
638
639Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
640
e8d56f18
JB
641*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
642
643* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
644
d6e00af6 645*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 646
60f98dde
MS
647* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
648 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
649 matches the given regular expression.
650
eee5b35e
DD
651* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
652
b716877b
AB
653* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
654 dumping the instruction opcodes.
655
aae1c79a
DE
656* New command line options
657
658-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
659 This is mostly for testing purposes.
660
a86caf66
DE
661* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
662 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
663
99e7ae30
DE
664* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
665 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
666 source path list instead of augmenting it.
667
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TT
668* GDB now understands thread names.
669
670 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
671 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
672
673 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
674 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
675
f4b8a18d
KW
676* OpenCL C
677 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
678 has been integrated into GDB.
679
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PM
680* Python scripting
681
da5d4055
PM
682 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
683 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
684 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
685
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PM
686 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
687 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
688 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
689 and allows for more dynamic content.
690
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691 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
692 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
693 have an is_valid method.
694
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PM
695 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
696 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
697 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
698
6e6fbe60
DE
699 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
700
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PM
701 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
702 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
703 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
704 that function like so:
705
706 result = some_value (10,20)
707
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DE
708 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
709 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
710 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
711
7b51bc51
DE
712 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
713 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
714 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
715 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
716 New function: register_pretty_printer.
717
718 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
719 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
720
99e7ae30
DE
721 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
722
d8e22779
TT
723 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
724 selected thread.
725
4694da01
TT
726 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
727 holds the thread's name.
728
505500db
SW
729 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
730 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 731 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
732 The following events are currently supported:
733 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
734 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
735 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
736
def98928
TT
737* C++ Improvements:
738
739 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
740 instantiation. For example, if you have:
741
742 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
743
744 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
745 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
746 was added to GCC 4.5.
747
66cb8159
TT
748 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
749 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
750 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
751 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
752 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
753 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
754
4aac0db7
UW
755* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
756 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
757 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
758 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
759 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
760
283e6a52
TT
761* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
762 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
763 execution to a label.
764
765* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
766 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
767 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
768 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
769
b56df873 770* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 771 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
772 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
773 of scope.
774
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PA
775* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
776
777 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
778 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
779 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
780 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
781 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
782 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
783
784 (gdb) info threads
785 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
786
787 While now you see this:
788
789 (gdb) info threads
790 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
791
792 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
793 dumps.
794
795 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
796 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
797 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
798 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
799
f1310107
TJB
800* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
801 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
802 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
803 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
804 section in the user manual for more details.
805
248c9dbc
JB
806* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
807
1aee7009
JB
808 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
809 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 810
eb826dc6
MF
811 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
812
44603653
JB
813* New native configurations
814
815ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
816
91021223
MF
817* New targets:
818
819Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
820
6e1bb179
JB
821* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
822 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
823 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
824 in the GDB user manual.
825
50c97f38
TT
826* Guile support was removed.
827
448a92bf
MF
828* New features in the GNU simulator
829
830 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
831
66ee2731
MF
832 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
833
76b8507d 834*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 835
ba25b921
PA
836* Shared library support for remote targets by default
837
838 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
839 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
840 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
841 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
842 was always disabled for such configurations.
843
4656f5c6
SW
844* C++ Improvements:
845
846 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
847
848 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
849 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
850 For example:
851 namespace A
852 {
853 class B { };
854 void foo (B) { }
855 }
856 ...
857 A::B b
858 foo(b)
859 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
860 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
861 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
862
863 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
864
865 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
866 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
867 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
868 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
869 entry.
870 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
871 mentioned flavors of operators.
872
254e6b9e
DE
873 ** static const class members
874
875 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
876 class definition has been fixed.
877
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PM
878* Windows Thread Information Block access.
879
880 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
881 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
882 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
883 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
884 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
885 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
886
0fb4aa4b
PA
887* Static tracepoints
888
889 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
890 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
891 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
892 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
893 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
894 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
895 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
896 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
897 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
898 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
899 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
900 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
901 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
902 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
903 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
904 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
905 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
906 the "New remote packets" section below.
907
ca11e899
SS
908* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
909
910 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
911 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
912 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
913 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
914
915* Observer mode
916
917 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
918 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
919 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
920 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
921 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
922 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
923 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
924
925* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
926 current thread.
927
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PM
928* New remote packets
929
930qGetTIBAddr
931
932 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
933
dde08ee1
PA
934qRelocInsn
935
936 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
937 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
938 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
939 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
940 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
941 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
942
0fb4aa4b
PA
943qTfSTM, qTsSTM
944
945 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
946
947qTSTMat
948
949 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
950 program.
951
952qXfer:statictrace:read
953
954 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
955 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
956 to gdb's qSupported query.
957
ca11e899
SS
958QAllow
959
960 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
961
962QTDPsrc
963
964 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
965 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
966
3f7b2faa
DE
967* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
968 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
969 a directory.
970
d337e9f0
PA
971* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
972
0fb4aa4b
PA
973 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
974 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
975 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
976 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
977
978 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
979 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
980 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
981 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
982 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
983 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
984 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
985
986 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
987 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 988
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PM
989 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
990
c8d5aac9
L
991* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
992 it understands register description.
993
7c953934
TT
994* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
995
8685c86f
L
996* X86 general purpose registers
997
998 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
999 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1000 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1001 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1002 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1003
95a42b64 1004* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1005 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1006 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1007 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1008 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1009 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1010
8bd10a10
CM
1011* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1012 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1013 in the specified file.
1014
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PA
1015* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1016 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1017 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1018 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1019 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1020 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1021 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1022 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1023 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1024 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1025
6149aea9
PA
1026* New commands
1027
f1421989
HZ
1028eval template, expressions...
1029 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1030 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1031
ab38a727
PA
1032set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1033show target-file-system-kind
1034 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1035 names.
1036
6149aea9
PA
1037save breakpoints <filename>
1038 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1039 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1040 definitions, use the `source' command.
1041
1042`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1043is now deprecated.
1044
0fb4aa4b
PA
1045info static-tracepoint-markers
1046 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1047
1048strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1049 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1050 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1051
ca11e899
SS
1052set observer on|off
1053show observer
1054 Enable and disable observer mode.
1055
1056set may-write-registers on|off
1057set may-write-memory on|off
1058set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1059set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1060set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1061set may-interrupt on|off
1062 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1063 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1064 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1065 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1066 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1067 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1068 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1069
1070set record memory-query on|off
1071show record memory-query
1072 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1073 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1074
53a71c06
CR
1075* Changed commands
1076
1077disassemble
1078 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1079
f3e9a817
PM
1080* Python scripting
1081
9279c692
JB
1082** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1083 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1084 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1085 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1086 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1087
adc36818 1088** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1089 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1090 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1091 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1092
fa33c3cd 1093** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1094 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1095
1096** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1097
1098** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1099
967cf477
DE
1100** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1101
8a1ea21f
DE
1102** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1103 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1104 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1105
a7bdde9e
VP
1106* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1107there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1108tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1109regular breakpoints.
1110
05071a4d
PA
1111* New targets
1112
1113ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1114
6aecb9c2
JB
1115* D language support.
1116 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1117 language.
1118
431e49aa
TJB
1119* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1120 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1121 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1122 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1123 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1124
1125* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1126 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1127 conditions of the form:
1128
1129 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1130
1131 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1132 interface mentioned above.
1133
bfbf3774 1134*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1135
4eef138c
TT
1136* C++ Improvements
1137
1138 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1139
1140 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1141 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1142 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1143 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1144 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1145
4eef138c
TT
1146 ** Bug Fixes
1147
1148 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1149 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1150 qualified name.
1151
1152 ** Cast Operators
1153
1154 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1155 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1156
2d1c1221
ME
1157* New targets
1158
1159Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1160Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1161
1162* New Simulators
1163
1164Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1165Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1166
6c95b8df
PA
1167* Multi-program debugging.
1168
1169 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1170 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1171 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1172 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1173 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1174 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1175 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1176 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1177
d5551862
SS
1178* New tracing features
1179
1180 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1181
1182 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1183
1184 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1185 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1186 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1187 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1188 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1189 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1190 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1191 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1192 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1193 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1194
d5551862 1195 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1196
1197 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1198 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1199 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1200 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1201 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1202 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1203 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1204 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1205 the regular trace command.
1206
d5551862
SS
1207 ** Disconnected tracing
1208
1209 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1210 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1211 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1212 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1213 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1214
00bf0b85
SS
1215 ** Trace files
1216
1217 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1218 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1219 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1220 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1221 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1222 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1223 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1224
1225 ** Circular trace buffer
1226
1227 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1228 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1229 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1230 not be available for all target agents.
1231
21a0512e
PP
1232* Changed commands
1233
1234disassemble
1235 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1236 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1237
0fe7935b
DJ
1238info variables
1239 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1240 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1241
fb2e7cb4
JB
1242source
1243 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1244 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1245 support.
1246
1247 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1248 "set script-extension" (see below).
1249
6c95b8df
PA
1250* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1251
399cd161
MS
1252record save [<FILENAME>]
1253 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1254 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1255
1256record restore <FILENAME>
1257 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1258 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1259
6c95b8df
PA
1260add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1261 Add a new inferior.
1262
1263clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1264 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1265 inferior has loaded.
1266
1267remove-inferior ID
1268 Remove an inferior.
1269
1270maint info program-spaces
1271 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1272
9a7071a8
JB
1273set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1274show remote interrupt-sequence
1275 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1276 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1277 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1278 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1279 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1280
1281set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1282show remote interrupt-on-connect
1283 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1284 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1285 Linux kernel.
1286
1287set remotebreak [on | off]
1288show remotebreak
1289Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1290
f61e138d
SS
1291tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1292 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1293
1294info tvariables
1295 List trace state variables and their values.
1296
1297delete tvariable $NAME ...
1298 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1299
6da95a67
SS
1300teval EXPR, ...
1301 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1302 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1303
7a697b8d
SS
1304ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1305 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1306
b0f02ee9
JK
1307* New expression syntax
1308
1309 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1310 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1311
6c95b8df
PA
1312* New options
1313
1314set follow-exec-mode new|same
1315show follow-exec-mode
1316 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1317 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1318 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1319
236f1d4d
SS
1320set default-collect EXPR, ...
1321show default-collect
1322 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1323 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1324 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1325
d5551862
SS
1326set disconnected-tracing
1327show disconnected-tracing
1328 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1329 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1330 upon disconnection.
1331
4daf5ac0
SS
1332set circular-trace-buffer
1333show circular-trace-buffer
1334 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1335 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1336 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1337 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1338
fb2e7cb4
JB
1339set script-extension off|soft|strict
1340show script-extension
1341 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1342 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1343 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1344 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1345 evaluation failed.
1346 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1347
2b71fc8e
JB
1348set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1349show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1350 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1351 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1352 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1353 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1354 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1355 is on.
1356
de2e5182
TT
1357* Python API Improvements
1358
1359 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1360 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1361 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1362
1363 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1364 `is_base_class' attribute.
1365
1366 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1367
1368 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1369 evaluate an expression.
1370
f61e138d
SS
1371* New remote packets
1372
1373QTDV
1374 Define a trace state variable.
1375
1376qTV
1377 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1378
d5551862
SS
1379QTDisconnected
1380 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1381
4daf5ac0
SS
1382QTBuffer:circular
1383 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1384
d5551862
SS
1385qTfP, qTsP
1386 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1387
2d483d34
MS
1388* Bug fixes
1389
1390Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1391
6e0e5977
JB
1392Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1393much more reliable. In particular:
1394 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1395 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1396 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1397 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1398 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1399 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1400 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1401 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1402 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1403 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1404 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1405 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1406 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1407 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1408 non-threaded programs.
1409
93c26624
JK
1410PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1411This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1412libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1413executable program.
1414
abc7453d 1415*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1416
4efc6507
DE
1417* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1418dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1419them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1420for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1421"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1422
782b2b07
SS
1423* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1424breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1425or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1426the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1427for tracepoint actions.
1428
53a71c06
CR
1429* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1430raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1431modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1432
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1433* Process record and replay
1434
1435 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1436 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1437 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1438 execute commands.
1439
64644d9b
MS
1440* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1441step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1442set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1443reverse execution.
1444
b9412953
DD
1445* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1446feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
14472.6.28 or later.
1448
6c7a06a3
TT
1449* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1450target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1451char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1452literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1453U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1454`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1455system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1456the installation instructions for more information.
1457
f1838a98
UW
1458* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1459remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1460with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1461the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1462
55333a84
DE
1463* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1464and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1465
7f6a6314
PM
1466* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1467now complete on file names.
1468
65d12d83
TT
1469* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1470completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1471For instance, consider:
1472
1473 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1474 # struct example variable;
1475 (gdb) p variable.
1476
1477If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1478completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1479
edb3359d
DJ
1480* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1481the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1482
2fae03e8
TT
1483* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1484operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1485macros.
1486
47a3467a 1487* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1488the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1489implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1490
1491* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1492registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1493can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1494and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1495
08388c79
DE
1496* New remote packets
1497
1498qSearch:memory:
1499 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1500
a6f3e723
SL
1501QStartNoAckMode
1502 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1503 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1504 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1505
d7713ae0
EZ
1506vKill
1507 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1508 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1509
07e059b5
VP
1510qXfer:osdata:read
1511 Obtains additional operating system information
1512
47a3467a
PA
1513qXfer:siginfo:read
1514qXfer:siginfo:write
1515 Read or write additional signal information.
1516
060871df
PA
1517* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1518
1519 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1520 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1521 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1522
c055b101 1523* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1524DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1525
1526* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1527and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1528`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1529
31fffb02
CS
1530* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1531with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1532
88d8a8e0
JB
1533* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1534
7f99b190
JB
1535* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1536
ccd213ac
DJ
1537* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1538which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1539
1fddbabb 1540* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1541list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1542
a0ef4274
DJ
1543* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1544conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1545have also been fixed.
1546
bfb8797a 1547* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1548From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1549are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1550
71c25dea
TT
1551* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1552example, given:
1553
1554 template<typename T> class C { };
1555 C<char const *> c;
1556
1557GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1558
1559 ptype C<char const *>
1560 ptype C<char const*>
1561 ptype C<const char *>
1562 ptype C<const char*>
1563
ccd213ac
DJ
1564* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1565
1566 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1567 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1568
7ae0e2a2
UW
1569 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1570 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1571 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1572
a6f3e723
SL
1573 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1574 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1575
da8bd9a3
DJ
1576 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1577 gdbserver.
1578
d70e31dd
DE
1579 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1580 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1581
1582 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1583 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1584 as appropriate.
1585
d57a3c85
TJB
1586* Python scripting
1587
1588 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1589 available is determined at configure time.
1590
d8906c6f
TJB
1591 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1592
aadc346a
JB
1593* Ada tasking support
1594
1595 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1596 been introduced:
1597
1598 info tasks
1599 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1600 info task N
1601 Print detailed information about task number N.
1602 task
1603 Print the task number of the current task.
1604 task N
1605 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1606
adb483fe
DJ
1607* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1608add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1609
2277426b
PA
1610* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1611
1612 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1613 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1614 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1615 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1616 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1617 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1618 below.
1619
08d16641
PA
1620* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1621"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1622information.
1623
e35359c5
UW
1624* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1625to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1626architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1627See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1628more information.
1629
85e747d2
UW
1630* Multi-architecture debugging.
1631
1632 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1633 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1634 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1635 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1636 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1637
1638* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1639use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1640Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1641powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1642--enable-targets configure option.
1643
11ade57a
PA
1644* Non-stop mode debugging.
1645
1646 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1647 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1648 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1649 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1650 section in the user manual for more information.
1651
1652 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1653 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1654 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1655 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1656 extensions on linux targets.
1657
d7713ae0 1658* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1659
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1660catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1661 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1662 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1663 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1664 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1665 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1666 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1667 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1668 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1669
08388c79
DE
1670find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1671 val1 [, val2, ...]
1672 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1673
d57a3c85
TJB
1674maint set python print-stack
1675maint show python print-stack
1676 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1677
1678python [CODE]
1679 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1680
d7713ae0
EZ
1681macro define
1682macro list
1683macro undef
1684 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1685 interactively.
1686
1687info os processes
1688 Show operating system information about processes.
1689
2277426b
PA
1690info inferiors
1691 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1692
1693inferior NUM
1694 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1695
1696detach inferior NUM
1697 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1698
1699kill inferior NUM
1700 Kill inferior number NUM.
1701
d7713ae0
EZ
1702* New options
1703
3285f3fe
UW
1704set spu stop-on-load
1705show spu stop-on-load
1706 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1707
ff1a52c6
UW
1708set spu auto-flush-cache
1709show spu auto-flush-cache
1710 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1711 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1712
d7713ae0
EZ
1713set sh calling-convention
1714show sh calling-convention
1715 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1716
e0a3ce09 1717set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1718show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1719 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1720
1721set disassemble-next-line
1722show disassemble-next-line
1723 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1724 the debuggee stops.
1725
1726set remote noack-packet
1727show remote noack-packet
1728 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1729 under "New remote packets."
1730
1731set remote query-attached-packet
1732show remote query-attached-packet
1733 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1734
1735set remote read-siginfo-object
1736show remote read-siginfo-object
1737 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1738 packet.
1739
1740set remote write-siginfo-object
1741show remote write-siginfo-object
1742 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1743 packet.
1744
40ab02ce
MS
1745set remote reverse-continue
1746show remote reverse-continue
1747 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1748
1749set remote reverse-step
1750show remote reverse-step
1751 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1752
d7713ae0
EZ
1753set displaced-stepping
1754show displaced-stepping
1755 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1756 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1757 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1758
1759set debug displaced
1760show debug displaced
1761 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1762
1763maint set internal-error
1764maint show internal-error
1765 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1766
1767maint set internal-warning
1768maint show internal-warning
1769 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1770
ccd213ac
DJ
1771set exec-wrapper
1772show exec-wrapper
1773unset exec-wrapper
1774 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1775
aad4b048
JB
1776set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1777show multiple-symbols
1778 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1779 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1780 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1781
74960c60
VP
1782set breakpoint always-inserted
1783show breakpoint always-inserted
1784 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1785 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1786 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1787
0428b8f5
DJ
1788set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1789show arm fallback-mode
1790set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1791show arm force-mode
1792 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1793 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1794 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1795 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1796
10568435
JK
1797set disable-randomization
1798show disable-randomization
1799 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1800 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1801 multiple debugging sessions.
1802
d7713ae0
EZ
1803set non-stop
1804show non-stop
1805 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1806 a breakpoint.
1807
b3eb342c 1808set target-async
d7713ae0 1809show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1810 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1811 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1812 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1813 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1814
6c7a06a3
TT
1815set target-wide-charset
1816show target-wide-charset
1817 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1818 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1819
84603566
SL
1820set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1821show tcp auto-retry
1822set tcp connect-timeout
1823show tcp connect-timeout
1824 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1825 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1826 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1827
17a37d48
PP
1828set libthread-db-search-path
1829show libthread-db-search-path
1830 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1831 libthread_db.
1832
d4db2f36
PA
1833set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1834show schedule-multiple
1835 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1836 the current process.
1837
4e5d721f
DE
1838set stack-cache
1839show stack-cache
1840 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1841 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1842 affecting correctness.
1843
910c5da8
JB
1844set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1845show interactive-mode
1846 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1847 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1848 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1849 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1850 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1851
2277426b
PA
1852* Removed commands
1853
1854info forks
1855 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1856 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1857 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1858 command.
1859
1860fork NUM
1861 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1862 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1863 alias for the `fork' command.
1864
1865process PID
1866 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1867 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1868 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1869
1870delete fork NUM
1871 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1872 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1873 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1874 fork' command.
1875
1876detach fork NUM
1877 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1878 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1879 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1880 fork' command.
1881
a80b95ba
TG
1882* New native configurations
1883
1884x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1885
b8bfd3ed
JB
1886x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1887
75a2d5e7
TT
1888* New targets
1889
c28c63d8 1890Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1891x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1892x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1893S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1894
6de3146c
PA
1895* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1896 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1897
d5cbbe6e
JB
1898* Removed commands
1899
1900catch load
1901catch unload
1902 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1903
75feb17d 1904*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1905
af5ca30d
NH
1906* New native configurations
1907
1908NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1909Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1910
1911* New targets
1912
1913NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1914Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1915
7a404eba
PA
1916* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1917
1918 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1919 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1920 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1921 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1922
430ebac9
PA
1923* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1924(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1925
fe6fbf8b 1926* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1927is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1928
1929* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1930including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1931and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1932
10665d76
JB
1933* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1934accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1935more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1936
7cc46491
DJ
1937* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1938
d71340b8
DJ
1939* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1940registers on PowerPC targets.
1941
523c4513
DJ
1942* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1943targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1944
a6b151f1
DJ
1945* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1946commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1947
2d717e4f
DJ
1948* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1949extended-remote mode.
1950
24a836bd 1951* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1952The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1953error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1954The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1955
d0c678e6
UW
1956* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1957building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1958target architectures.
1959
d64a946d
TJB
1960* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1961Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1962now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1963stored in two consecutive float registers.
1964
ee163bf5
VP
1965* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1966breakpoints now.
1967
b93b6ca7 1968* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1969Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1970include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1971 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1972 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1973 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1974 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1975 of an assignment
1976 - Improved command completion in Ada
1977 - Several bug fixes
1978
d001be7a
DJ
1979* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1980process.
1981
a6b151f1
DJ
1982* New commands
1983
6d53d0af
JB
1984set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1985show print frame-arguments
1986 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1987 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1988
a6b151f1
DJ
1989remote put
1990remote get
1991remote delete
1992 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1993
1994* New MI commands
1995
1996-target-file-put
1997-target-file-get
1998-target-file-delete
1999 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2000
2001* New remote packets
2002
2003vFile:open:
2004vFile:close:
2005vFile:pread:
2006vFile:pwrite:
2007vFile:unlink:
2008 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2009
2d717e4f
DJ
2010vAttach
2011 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2012 mode.
2013
2014vRun
2015 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2016
8d5f9c6f 2017*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2018
19d378fc
MS
2019* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2020bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2021Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2022
3a40aaa0
UW
2023* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2024symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2025-Bsymbolic linker option.
2026
a6ec25f2
BW
2027* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2028recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2029is not supported.
2030
6dd09645
JB
2031* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2032frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2033
c9bb8148
DJ
2034* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
203532-bit or 64-bit register values.
2036
0d5de010
DJ
2037* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2038
23181151
DJ
2039* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2040target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2041a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2042
ea37ba09
DJ
2043* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2044automatically displayed as character or string data.
2045
2046* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2047arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2048as strings.
e1f48ead 2049
123dc839
DJ
2050* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2051for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2052only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2053
05a4558a
DJ
2054* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2055iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2056
7c963485
PA
2057* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2058ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2059has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2060
b18be20d
DJ
2061* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2062
0ca420ce
UW
2063* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2064
31d99776
DJ
2065* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2066layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2067segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2068
a4642986
MR
2069* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2070immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2071
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2072* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2073"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2074packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2075where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2076Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2077
2078* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2079(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2080
2081* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2082according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2083
c9bb8148
DJ
2084* New commands
2085
23776285
MR
2086set remoteflow
2087show remoteflow
2088 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2089 when debugging using remote targets.
2090
c9bb8148
DJ
2091set mem inaccessible-by-default
2092show mem inaccessible-by-default
2093 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2094 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2095 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2096 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2097 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2098
2099set breakpoint auto-hw
2100show breakpoint auto-hw
2101 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2102 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2103 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2104 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2105 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2106 including "next" and "finish".
2107
0e420bd8
JB
2108catch exception
2109catch exception unhandled
2110 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2111
2112catch assert
2113 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2114
f822c95b
DJ
2115set sysroot
2116show sysroot
2117 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2118 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2119 an alias to "set sysroot".
2120
83cc5c53
UW
2121info spu
2122 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2123 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2124 architecture.
2125
bd372731
MK
2126* New native configurations
2127
2128OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2129
23181151
DJ
2130set tdesc filename
2131unset tdesc filename
2132show tdesc filename
2133 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2134 not query the target for its built-in description.
2135
c9bb8148
DJ
2136* New targets
2137
54fe9172 2138OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2139MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2140Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2141
6dd09645
JB
2142* New remote packets
2143
2144QPassSignals:
2145 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2146 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2147
23181151
DJ
2148qXfer:features:read:
2149 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2150 features.
6dd09645 2151
83cc5c53
UW
2152qXfer:spu:read:
2153qXfer:spu:write:
2154 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2155 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2156
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2157qXfer:libraries:read:
2158 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2159 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2160 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2161 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2162
483367ee
DJ
2163* Removed targets
2164
2165Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2166
d08950c4
UW
2167alpha*-*-osf1*
2168alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2169d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2170hppa*-*-hiux*
2171i[34567]86-ncr-*
2172i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2173i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2174i[34567]86-*-netware*
2175i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2176i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2177i[34567]86-*-sco*
2178i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2179i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2180i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2181i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2182i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2183i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2184i[34567]86-*-isc*
2185m68*-cisco*-*
2186m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2187mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2188rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2189sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2190
7ce59000
DJ
2191* Other removed features
2192
2193target abug
2194target cpu32bug
2195target est
2196target rom68k
2197
2198 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2199
ea35711c
DJ
2200target hms
2201target e7000
2202target sh3
2203target sh3e
2204
2205 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2206 H8/300.
2207
2208target ocd
2209
2210 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2211 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2212 interfaces.
2213
7ce59000
DJ
2214DWARF 1 support
2215
2216 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2217 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2218
54d61198
DJ
2219Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2220
2221 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2222 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2223 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2224 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2225
ea35711c
DJ
2226MIPS ".pdr" sections
2227
2228 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2229 in debugging information.
2230
2231Scheme support
2232
2233 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2234 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2235
1a69e1e4
DJ
2236set mips stack-arg-size
2237set mips saved-gpreg-size
2238
2239 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2240
6dd09645 2241*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2242
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2243* New targets
2244
2245Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2246Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2247
6aec2e11
DJ
2248* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2249(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2250running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2251
2252* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2253Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2254supported.
2255
17218d91
DJ
2256* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2257broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2258
9ebce043
DJ
2259* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2260stub provides the required support.
2261
7d3d3ece
DJ
2262* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2263longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2264
4f8253f3
JB
2265* New commands
2266
2267set substitute-path
2268unset substitute-path
2269show substitute-path
2270 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2271 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2272 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2273 between compilation and debugging.
2274
9fa66fd7
AS
2275set trace-commands
2276show trace-commands
2277 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2278 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2279 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2280
1f5befc1
DJ
2281* REMOVED features
2282
2283The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2284
2ec3381a
DJ
2285Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2286an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2287
3d00d119
DJ
2288The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2289
be2a5f71
DJ
2290* New remote packets
2291
2292qSupported:
2293 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2294 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2295 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2296 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2297 target.
2298
0876f84a
DJ
2299qXfer:auxv:read:
2300 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2301 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2302
9ebce043
DJ
2303qXfer:memory-map:read:
2304 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2305 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2306
2307vFlashErase:
2308vFlashWrite:
2309vFlashDone:
2310 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2311
0876f84a
DJ
2312* Removed remote packets
2313
2314qPart:auxv:read:
2315 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2316 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2317
e374b601 2318*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2319
96309189
MS
2320* New targets
2321
2322Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2323
2324Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2325
53e5f3cf
AS
2326* New commands
2327
2328init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2329 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2330
ac264b3b
MS
2331The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2332
2333checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2334
2335restart <n> Return the program state to a
2336 previously saved state.
2337
2338info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2339
2340delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2341
2342set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2343 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2344
2345info forks List forks of the user program that
2346 are available to be debugged.
2347
2348fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2349 forks of the user program that are
2350 available to be debugged.
2351
2352delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2353 that are available to be debugged (and
2354 kill the forked process).
2355
2356detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2357 that are available to be debugged (and
2358 allow the process to continue).
2359
3950dc3f
NS
2360* New architecture
2361
2362Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2363
0ea3f30e
DJ
2364* Improved Windows host support
2365
2366GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2367native console support, and remote communications using either
2368network sockets or serial ports.
2369
f79daebb
GM
2370* Improved Modula-2 language support
2371
2372GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2373basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2374pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2375printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2376written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2377GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2378
acab6ab2
MM
2379* REMOVED features
2380
2381The ARM rdi-share module.
2382
f4267320
DJ
2383The Netware NLM debug server.
2384
53e5f3cf 2385*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2386
e0ecbda1
MK
2387* New native configurations
2388
02a677ac 2389OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2390OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2391
d64a6579
KB
2392* New targets
2393
2394Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2395
b33a6190
AS
2396* New command line options
2397
2398--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2399--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2400 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2401--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2402 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2403 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2404 with the --command (-x) option.
2405
11dced61
AC
2406* Deprecated commands removed
2407
2408The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2409removed:
2410
2411 Command Replacement
2412 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2413 othernames set arm disassembler
2414 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2415 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2416 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2417 regs info registers
2418
6fe85783
MK
2419* New BSD user-level threads support
2420
2421It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2422library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2423configurations are:
2424
2425FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2426FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2427OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2428
2429Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2430are not yet supported.
2431
5260ca71
MS
2432* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2433(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2434
e84ecc99
AC
2435* REMOVED configurations and files
2436
2437VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2438Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2439National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2440
31e35378
JB
2441* New "set print array-indexes" command
2442
2443After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2444when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2445behavior.
2446
e85e5c83
MK
2447* VAX floating point support
2448
2449GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2450
d91e9901
AS
2451* User-defined command support
2452
2453In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2454to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2455section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2456
f2cb65ca
MC
2457*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2458
f47b1503
AS
2459* New command line option
2460
2461GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2462debugging.
2463
f2cb65ca
MC
2464* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2465
2466GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2467information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2468by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2469proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2470to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2471
d08c0230
AC
2472* Internationalization
2473
2474When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2475internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2476continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2477
117ea3cf
PH
2478* Ada
2479
2480Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2481implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2482into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2483
d08c0230
AC
2484* New native configurations
2485
2486GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2487
2488* Remote 'p' packet
2489
2490GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2491packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2492
2493* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2494
2495GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2496The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2497features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2498i386 application).
2499
2500GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2501compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2502continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2503configurations:
2504
2505hppa-*-hpux
2506ia64-*-aix
2507mips-*-irix*
2508*-*-lynx
2509mips-*-linux-gnu
2510sds protocol
2511xdr protocol
2512powerpc bdm protocol
2513
2514Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2515made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2516
2517* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2518
2519Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2520been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2521configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2522permanently REMOVED.
2523
2524h8300-*-*
2525mcore-*-*
2526mn10300-*-*
2527ns32k-*-*
2528sh64-*-*
2529v850-*-*
2530
ebb7c577
AC
2531*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2532
2533* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2534
2535When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2536heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2537been fixed.
2538
2539* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2540
2541When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2542fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2543IRIX long double values).
2544
2545* VAX and "next"
2546
2547A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2548command. This problem has been fixed.
2549
860660cb 2550*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2551
0dea2468
AC
2552* Fix for ``many threads''
2553
2554On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2555rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2556error message:
2557
2558 ptrace: No such process.
2559 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2560
2561This problem has been fixed.
2562
2c07db7a
AC
2563* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2564
2565Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2566GDB to dump core).
2567
c23968a2
JB
2568* New ``start'' command.
2569
2570This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2571
71009278
MK
2572* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2573
2574Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2575live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2576platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2577
2578FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2579FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2580NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2581NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2582NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2583OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2584OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2585OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2586OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2587
3c0b7db2
AC
2588* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2589
2590Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2591These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2592of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2593call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2594signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2595
73cc75f3
AC
2596Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2597features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2598include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2599
7243600a
BF
2600* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2601
6f606e1c
MK
2602* New native configurations
2603
97dc871c 2604GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2605OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2606OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2607OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2608OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2609NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2610OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2611
a1b461bf
AC
2612* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2613
2614GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2615The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2616including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2617migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2618compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2619work, was also included.
2620
2621GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2622module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2623
2624h8300-*-*
2625mcore-*-*
2626mn10300-*-*
2627ns32k-*-*
2628sh64-*-*
2629v850-*-*
2630xstormy16-*-*
2631
2632Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2633made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2634
3c7012f5
AC
2635* REMOVED configurations and files
2636
2637Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2638Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2639Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2640Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2641Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2642AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2643Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2644decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2645riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2646sonymips mips-sony-*
2647sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2648
e5fe55f7
AC
2649*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2650
2651* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2652
2653The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2654GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2655command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2656program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2657with GDB".
2658
2659* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2660
2661Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2662libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2663cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2664GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2665shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2666the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2667are created.
2668
2669Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2670
2671* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2672
2673The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2674non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2675compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2676
2677* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2678
2679Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2680wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2681
2682* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2683
2684The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2685permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2686systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2687
2688* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2689
2690Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2691has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2692
2693* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2694
2695GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2696its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2697panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2698
2699* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2700
2701When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2702by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2703not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2704
faae5abe 2705*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2706
9175c9a3
MC
2707* Removed --with-mmalloc
2708
2709Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2710conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2711
3cc87ec0
MK
2712* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2713
2714The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2715the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2716and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2717you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2718
f0424ef6
MK
2719* Revised SPARC target
2720
2721The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2722FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2723support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2724from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2725(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2726
59659be2
ILT
2727* New C++ demangler
2728
2729GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2730names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2731with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2732programs.
2733
9e08b29b
DJ
2734* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2735
2736GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2737arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2738encountered these.
2739
8dfe8985
DC
2740* C++ nested types and namespaces
2741
2742GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2743improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2744is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2745Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2746namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2747"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2748frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2749if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2750GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2751
cced5e27
MK
2752* New native configurations
2753
2754NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2755OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2756OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2757OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2758OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2759
b4b4b794
KI
2760* New debugging protocols
2761
2762M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2763
7989c619
AC
2764* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2765
2766The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2767and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2768tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2769
5994185b
AC
2770* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2771
2772Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2773been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2774configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2775permanently REMOVED.
2776
2777Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2778Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2779Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2780Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2781Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2782AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2783Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2784decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2785riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2786sonymips mips-sony-*
2787sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2788
0ddabb4c
AC
2789* REMOVED configurations and files
2790
2791SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2792SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2793Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2794Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2795H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2796HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2797HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2798HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2799PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2800386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2801Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2802 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2803 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2804SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2805SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2806Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2807Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2808
c7f1390e
DJ
2809*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2810
1fe43d45
AC
2811* Objective-C
2812
2813Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2814integrated into GDB.
2815
e6beb428
AC
2816* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2817
2818DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2819information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2820By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2821backtraces.
2822
2823The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2824have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2825DWARF 2 CFI support.
2826
2827* Hosted file I/O.
2828
2829GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2830file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2831remote protocol documentation for details.
2832
2833* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2834
2835All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2836architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2837to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2838ppc32 on ppc64).
2839
2840* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2841
2842GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2843per-thread variables.
2844
2845* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2846
2847GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2848GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2849
2850* Separate debug info.
2851
2852GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2853automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2854of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2855system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2856and optional debug files.
2857
2858* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2859
2860DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2861describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2862debugger.
2863
2864GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2865for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2866
2867* Java
2868
2869A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2870Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2871considered "useable".
2872
85f8f974
DJ
2873* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2874
2875The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2876commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2877kernel.
2878
0fac0b41
DJ
2879* GDB supports logging output to a file
2880
2881There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2882used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2883
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2884* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2885
2886The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2887disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2888command.
2889
e286caf2 2890* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2891
2892The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2893registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2894
d28f9cdf
DJ
2895* Profiling support
2896
2897A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2898be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2899session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2900"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2901data, for more informative profiling results.
2902
da0f9dcd
AC
2903* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2904
2905The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2906option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2907"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2908
2909Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2910removed.
2911
fb9b6b35
JJ
2912Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2913Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2914Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2915 in a subsequent -var-update.
2916
954a4db8
MK
2917* New native configurations.
2918
2919FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2920
6760f9e6
JB
2921* Multi-arched targets.
2922
b4263afa 2923HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2924Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2925
1b831c93
AC
2926* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2927
2928Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2929been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2930configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2931permanently REMOVED.
2932
8b0e5691 2933Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2934Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2935H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2936HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2937HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2938HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2939PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2940Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2941 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2942 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2943Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2944Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2945
5835abe7
NC
2946* REMOVED configurations and files
2947
2948V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2949Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2950IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2951i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2952i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2953i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2954HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2955 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2956 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2957Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2958Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2959Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2960OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2961I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2962
a094c6fb
AC
2963* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2964
2965The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2966the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2967context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2968address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2969The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2970
299ffc64 2971*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2972
46248966
AC
2973* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2974
2975When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2976`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2977in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2978library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2979shared libs like mad''.
2980
b9d14705 2981* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2982
b9d14705
DJ
2983Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2984the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2985arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2986powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2987
e0e9281e
JB
2988* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2989
2990GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2991and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2992they expand.
2993
dd73b9bb
AC
2994The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2995invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2996
2997The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2998macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2999
e0e9281e
JB
3000Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3001information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3002your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3003information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3004
2250ee0c
CV
3005* Multi-arched targets.
3006
6e3ba3b8
JT
3007DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3008DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3009NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3010National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3011Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3012Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3013
cd9bfe15 3014* New targets.
e33ce519 3015
456f8b9d
DB
3016Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3017
e33ce519 3018
da8ca43d
JT
3019* New native configurations
3020
3021Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3022SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3023MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3024UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3025
cd9bfe15
AC
3026* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3027
3028Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3029been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3030configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3031permanently REMOVED.
3032
92eb23c5 3033Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3034OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3035IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3036Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3037Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3038Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3039i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3040i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3041i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3042HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3043 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3044 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3045I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3046
db034ac5
AC
3047* OBSOLETE languages
3048
3049CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3050
cd9bfe15
AC
3051* REMOVED configurations and files
3052
3053AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3054A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3055AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3056AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3057AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3058
3059testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3060
20f01a46
DH
3061* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3062
3063This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3064commands. The default is 1024.
3065
a5941fbf
MK
3066* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3067
3068Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3069
89743e04
MS
3070* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3071
3072These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3073to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3074from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3075
9fb14e79
JB
3076* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3077
3078The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3079including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3080of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3081
2037aebb
AC
3082*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3083
3084* New targets.
3085
3086Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3087
3088* Bug fixes
3089
3090gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3091mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3092Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3093
3094gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3095dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3096Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3097
3098Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3099Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3100By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3101
3102i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3103avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3104By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3105
37057839 3106*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3107
1a703748
MS
3108* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3109
3110This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3111really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3112In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3113target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3114This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3115(notably embedded) targets.
3116
cefd4ef5
MS
3117* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3118
55241689
AC
3119This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3120process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3121GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3122hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3123
352ed7b4
MS
3124* New command line option
3125
3126GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3127
3128* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3129
3130There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3131command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3132a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3133be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3134open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3135issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3136a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3137it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3138GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3139is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3140
fe419ffc
RE
3141* Changes in ARM configurations.
3142
3143Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3144configuration is fully multi-arch.
3145
eb7cedd9
MK
3146* New native configurations
3147
fe419ffc 3148ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3149x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3150AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3151Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3152
c9f63e6b
CV
3153* New targets
3154
3155Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3156
9b4ff276
AC
3157* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3158
3159Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3160been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3161configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3162permanently REMOVED.
3163
3164AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3165A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3166AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3167AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3168AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3169
b4ceaee6 3170testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3171
e2caac18
AC
3172* REMOVED configurations and files
3173
3174TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3175WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3176PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3177PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3178PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3179Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3180Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3181 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3182SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3183Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3184Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3185ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3186Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3187
c2a727fa
TT
3188* Changes to command line processing
3189
3190The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3191for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3192
467d8519
TT
3193* Changes to key bindings
3194
3195There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3196
7072a954
AC
3197*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3198
3199Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3200
3201Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3202corrupted.
3203
3204Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3205
3206Numerous documentation fixes.
3207
3208Numerous testsuite fixes.
3209
34f47bc4 3210*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3211
3212* New native configurations
3213
3214Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3215x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3216MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3217MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3218ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3219s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3220
bf64bfd6
AC
3221* New targets
3222
def90278 3223Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3224CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3225UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3226
17e78a56 3227* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3228
3229x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3230Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3231Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3232 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3233TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3234WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3235Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3236PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3237PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3238PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3239SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3240Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3241ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3242Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3243
17e78a56
AC
3244stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3245kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3246
7fcca85b
AC
3247Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3248been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3249configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3250permanently REMOVED.
3251
a196c81c 3252* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3253
3254Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3255Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3256Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3257ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3258Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3259ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3260
6d6b80e5 3261* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3262
6d6b80e5 3263GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3264sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3265present.
3266
bf64bfd6
AC
3267* Other news:
3268
e23194cb
EZ
3269* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3270
3271* The MI enabled by default.
3272
3273The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3274revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3275engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3276using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3277which is now deprecated.
3278
3279* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3280
3281GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3282main features are supported:
3283
3284 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3285
3286 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3287 extension;
3288
3289 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3290
3291 - a Pascal expression parser.
3292
3293However, some important features are not yet supported.
3294
3295 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3296
3297 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3298
3299 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3300 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3301
3302 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3303
3304 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3305
3306* Changes in completion.
3307
3308Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3309to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3310users expect at the shell prompt.
3311
3312Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3313`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3314program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3315files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3316be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3317considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3318name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3319
3320`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3321
3322* New platform-independent commands:
3323
3324It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3325hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3326documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3327
3328* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3329
d7275149
MK
3330Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3331revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3332many threads as your system allows you to have.
3333
e23194cb
EZ
3334Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3335
d7275149
MK
3336Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3337multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3338
3339* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3340
3341Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3342
e23194cb
EZ
3343GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3344debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3345supported.)
3346
3347* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3348
3349Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3350breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3351implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3352put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3353and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3354registers.
3355
3356The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3357debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3358watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3359
3360* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3361
3362New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3363the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3364
3365New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3366display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3367IDT.
3368
3369New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3370from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3371New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3372a given linear address.
3373
3374GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3375program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3376which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3377
3378DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3379
6c56c069
EZ
3380It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3381
e23194cb
EZ
3382* Changes in documentation.
3383
3384All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3385Documentation License.
3386
3387Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3388manual.
3389
3390TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3391
3392Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3393manual.
3394
3395The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3396documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3397hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3398
5d6640b1
AC
3399* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3400
3401The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3402``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3403contents of this file.
3404
1a1d8446
AC
3405* gdba.el deleted
3406
3407GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3408
9debab2f 3409*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3410
c63ce875
EZ
3411* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3412
3413Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3414programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3415displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3416greater level of detail.
3417
3418* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3419
3420It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3421bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3422on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3423written.
3424
3425* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3426
3427The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3428necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3429machines ``out of the box''.
3430
3431The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3432possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3433signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3434would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3435interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3436
3437It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3438standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3439even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3440and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3441terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3442
3443The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3444enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3445also works.
3446
3447DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3448GDB.
3449
3450It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3451directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3452times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3453breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3454
ed9a39eb
JM
3455* New native configurations
3456
3457ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3458PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3459
7a292a7a
SS
3460* New targets
3461
96baa820 3462Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3463x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3464PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3465TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3466
085dd6e6
JM
3467* OBSOLETE configurations
3468
3469Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3470Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3471Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3472ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3473Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3474
9debab2f
AC
3475Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3476but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3477these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3478be permanently REMOVED.
3479
5330533d
SS
3480* Gould support removed
3481
3482Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3483
bc9e5bbf
AC
3484* New features for SVR4
3485
3486On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3487without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3488load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3489
3490* Many C++ enhancements
3491
3492C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3493in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3494
adf40b2e
JM
3495* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3496
3497A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3498sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3499with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3500``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3501
3502 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3503 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3504
43e526b9
JM
3505* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3506
3507A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3508expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3509instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3510
3511The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3512added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3513
96baa820
JM
3514* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3515
3516The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3517``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3518include ``set remote P-packet''.
3519
11cf8741
JM
3520* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3521
3522The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3523accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3524``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3525
7876dd43
DB
3526* ``apropos'' command added.
3527
3528The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3529documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3530try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3531
bc9e5bbf
AC
3532* New MI interface
3533
3534A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3535interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3536process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3537"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3538enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3539
3540 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3541
c906108c
SS
3542*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3543
3544* New native configurations
3545
3546HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3547HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3548M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3549
3550* New targets
3551
3552Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3553Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3554Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3555
3556* OBSOLETE configurations
3557
3558Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3559
3560Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3561but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3562these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3563be permanently REMOVED.
3564
3565* ANSI/ISO C
3566
3567As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3568buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3569containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3570use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3571available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3572configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3573information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3574already.
3575
3576* Readline 2.2
3577
3578GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3579
3580* set extension-language
3581
3582You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3583languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3584you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3585 set extension-language .c c++
3586The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3587and their associated languages.
3588
3589* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3590
3591When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3592you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3593PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3594
3595 set processor NAME
3596
3597sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3598following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3599
3600 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3601 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3602 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3603 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3604 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3605 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3606 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3607 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3608 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3609 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3610 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3611
3612At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3613special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3614registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3615only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3616
3617* HP-UX support
3618
3619Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3620more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3621library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3622support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3623for xdb and dbx commands.
3624
3625* Catchpoints
3626
3627HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3628generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3629to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3630
3631This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3632argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3633output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3634
3635* Debugging across forks
3636
3637On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3638in the inferior.
3639
3640* TUI
3641
3642HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3643it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3644configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3645
3646* GDB remote protocol additions
3647
3648A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3649Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3650fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3651allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3652
3653For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3654full 64-bit address. The command
3655
3656 set remoteaddresssize 32
3657
3658can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3659the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3660will be discarded.
3661
3662In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3663command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3664
3665 maint packet heythere
3666
3667sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3668disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3669time.
3670
3671The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3672target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3673downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3674
3675* Tracing can collect general expressions
3676
3677You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3678further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3679doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3680
3681* mask-address variable for Mips
3682
3683For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3684a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3685of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3686
3687* Higher serial baud rates
3688
3689GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3690230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3691to achieve all of these rates.)
3692
3693* i960 simulator
3694
3695The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3696builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3697
3698
3699*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3700
3701* New native configurations
3702
3703Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3704Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3705Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3706PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3707PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3708Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3709Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3710
3711* New targets
3712
3713Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3714Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3715Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3716Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3717MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3718MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3719MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3720Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3721Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3722Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3723NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3724
3725* New debugging protocols
3726
3727ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3728M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3729DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3730PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3731PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3732Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3733
3734* DWARF 2
3735
3736All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3737format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3738information.
3739
3740* Java frontend
3741
3742GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3743only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3744
3745* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3746
3747For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3748loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3749locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3750
3751* Live range splitting
3752
3753GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3754range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3755more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3756
3757* Hurd support
3758
3759GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3760updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3761
3762* ARM Thumb support
3763
3764GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3765instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3766instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3767accordingly.
3768
3769* MIPS16 support
3770
3771GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3772instruction set.
3773
3774* Overlay support
3775
3776GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3777linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3778will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3779control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3780additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3781in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3782
3783* info symbol
3784
3785The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3786the symbol at the specified address.
3787
3788* Trace support
3789
3790The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3791asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3792extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3793includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3794file tracepoint.c for more details.
3795
3796* MIPS simulator
3797
3798Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3799by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3800of most MIPS variants.
3801
3802* Sparc simulator
3803
3804Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3805by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3806Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3807
3808* set architecture
3809
3810For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3811basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3812architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3813the possible architectures.
3814
3815*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3816
3817* New native configurations
3818
3819Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3820M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3821PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3822PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3823PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3824RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3825
3826* New targets
3827
3828ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3829I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3830MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3831MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3832PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3833Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3834Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3835
3836* PowerPC simulator
3837
3838The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3839contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3840PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3841basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3842performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3843
3844* Solaris 2.5
3845
3846GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3847
3848* Windows 95/NT native
3849
3850GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3851To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3852which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3853Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3854ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3855
3856* dont-repeat command
3857
3858If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3859command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3860useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3861extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3862
3863* Send break instead of ^C
3864
3865The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3866rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3867GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3868
3869* Remote protocol timeout
3870
3871The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3872that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3873to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3874
3875* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3876
3877By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3878loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3879stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3880when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3881in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3882
3883Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3884/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3885automatically on hpux10.
3886
3887* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3888
3889Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3890
3891* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3892
3893When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3894may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3895the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3896every character. The default value is 1050.
3897
3898* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3899
3900If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3901a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3902replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3903details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3904remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3905to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3906
3907* Speedups for remote debugging
3908
3909GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3910the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3911and more efficient S-record downloading.
3912
3913* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3914
3915GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3916Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3917
3918*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3919
3920* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3921
3922The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3923can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3924
3925* Remote targets use caching
3926
3927Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3928remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3929it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3930debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3931off' turns the the data cache off.
3932
3933* Remote targets may have threads
3934
3935The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3936in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3937gdb/remote.c for details.
3938
3939* NetROM support
3940
3941If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3942support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3943acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3944write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3945support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3946another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3947sequence is something like
3948
3949 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3950 load <prog>
3951 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3952
3953* Macintosh host
3954
3955GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3956may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3957it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3958available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3959device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3960directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3961scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3962mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3963
3964* Autoconf
3965
3966GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3967but does simplify configuration and building.
3968
3969* hpux10
3970
3971GDB now supports hpux10.
3972
3973*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3974
3975* New native configurations
3976
3977x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3978x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3979NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3980Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3981
3982* New targets
3983
3984A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3985HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3986CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3987PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3988WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3989
3990* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3991
3992GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3993possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3994filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3995the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3996if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3997
3998* Arguments to user-defined commands
3999
4000User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4001Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4002trivial example:
4003define adder
4004 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4005
4006To execute the command use:
4007adder 1 2 3
4008
4009Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4010Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4011use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4012
4013* New `if' and `while' commands
4014
4015This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4016commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4017expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4018execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4019terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4020`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4021if the expression is zero.
4022
4023* Fortran source language mode
4024
4025GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4026Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4027variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4028with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4029Fortran compilers.
4030
4031* Better HPUX support
4032
4033Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4034running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4035processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4036for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4037that behavior do the following before running the program:
4038
4039 adb -w a.out
4040 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4041 control-d
4042
4043This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4044To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4045
4046 adb -w a.out
4047 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4048 control-d
4049
4050You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4051the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4052external linkage.
4053
4054GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4055HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4056
4057* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4058
4059You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4060commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4061current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4062"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4063associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4064configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4065
4066* New DOS host serial code
4067
4068This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4069no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4070a PC's serial port.
4071
4072*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4073
4074* New "complete" command
4075
4076This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4077were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4078
4079* Trailing space optional in prompt
4080
4081"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4082allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4083
4084* Breakpoint hit counts
4085
4086"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4087has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4088can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4089to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4090less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4091that breakpoint.
4092
4093* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4094
4095"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4096an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4097arrays actually contain only short strings.
4098
4099* Shared library breakpoints
4100
4101In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4102breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4103
4104* Hardware watchpoints
4105
4106There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4107targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4108
55241689 4109Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4110
4111* Annotations
4112
4113Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4114and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4115
4116* Improved Irix 5 support
4117
4118GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4119
4120* Improved HPPA support
4121
4122GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4123
4124* New native configurations
4125
4126Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4127HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4128Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4129RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4130
4131* New targets
4132
4133OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4134MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4135Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4136
4137* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4138
4139There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4140This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4141
4142* Fixes
4143
4144As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4145and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4146
4147*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4148
4149* Irix 5 is now supported
4150
4151* HPPA support
4152
4153GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4154to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4155GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4156of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4157can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4158
4159
4160*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4161
4162* User visible changes:
4163
4164* Remote Debugging
4165
4166The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4167target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4168debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4169integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4170debugging info for the mips target).
4171
4172* DEC Alpha native support
4173
4174GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4175debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4176work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4177Alpha-specific notes.
4178
4179* Preliminary thread implementation
4180
4181GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4182
4183* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4184
4185This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4186to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4187for details).
4188
4189* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4190
4191This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4192mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4193call methods, ...etc.
4194
4195*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4196
4197 * User visible changes:
4198
4199Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4200supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4201other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4202somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4203
4204Filename completion now works.
4205
4206When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4207arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4208addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4209
4210All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4211vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4212should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4213your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4214to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4215
4216 * DEC alpha support
4217
4218This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4219cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4220
4221
4222*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4223
4224 * Testsuite
4225
4226This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4227The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4228via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4229
4230 * C++ demangling
4231
4232'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4233emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4234Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4235disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4236use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4237
4238 * Simulators
4239
4240GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4241So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4242Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4243
4244 * New targets supported
4245
4246H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4247H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4248SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4249Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4250IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4251
4252Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4253version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4254GO32 memory extender.
4255
4256 * New remote protocols
4257
4258MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4259
4260 * New source languages supported
4261
4262This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4263used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4264into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4265
4266
4267*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4268
4269 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4270
4271GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4272version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4273University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4274compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4275format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4276(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4277
4278Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4279
4280 * Faster and better demangling
4281
4282We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4283demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4284character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4285only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4286This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4287increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4288symbol lookups.
4289
4290`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4291from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4292compiler does not actually implement.
4293
4294 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4295
4296In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4297inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4298recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4299very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4300The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4301circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4302fix.
4303
4304The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4305release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4306
4307 * Improved configure script
4308
4309The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4310you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4311host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4312done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4313
4314We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4315version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4316`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4317The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4318only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4319We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4320
4321 * Documentation improvements
4322
4323There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4324produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4325before submitting changes.
4326
4327The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4328M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4329`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4330you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4331a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4332
4333*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4334We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4335been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4336or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4337`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4338around this problem.
4339
4340 * New features
4341
4342GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4343the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4344`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4345the target program.
4346
4347The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4348how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4349
4350 * New native hosts supported
4351
4352HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4353386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4354
4355 * New targets supported
4356
4357AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4358
4359 * New file formats supported
4360
4361BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4362HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4363
4364 * Major bug fixes
4365
4366Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4367
4368We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4369printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4370
4371We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4372for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4373release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4374
4375You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4376will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4377
4378We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4379for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4380especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4381libraries.
4382
4383The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4384information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4385command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4386any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4387when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4388
4389 * Internal improvements
4390
4391GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4392debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4393
4394GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4395Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4396symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4397contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4398shared code that handles any of them.
4399
4400 * New command line options
4401
4402We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4403
4404 * Mmalloc licensing
4405
4406The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4407General Public License.
4408
4409*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4410
4411 * Host/native/target split
4412
4413GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4414hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4415target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4416local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4417ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4418
4419The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4420GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4421is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4422code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4423any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4424built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4425handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4426
4427GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4428It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4429plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4430
4431 * New hosts supported
4432
4433HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4434386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4435386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4436
4437 * New targets supported
4438
4439Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
444068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4441
4442 * New native hosts supported
4443
4444386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4445 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4446386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4447
4448 * New file formats supported
4449
4450BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4451supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4452format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4453
4454 * New commands
4455
4456`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4457`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4458These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4459
4460`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4461
4462You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4463scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4464prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4465executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4466
4467 * C++ improvements
4468
4469We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4470info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4471symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4472
4473Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4474
4475 * Major bug fixes
4476
4477The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4478fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4479by the compiler.
4480
4481We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4482support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4483
4484John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4485slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4486that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4487purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4488the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4489mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4490
4491Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4492about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4493completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4494we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4495
4496 * AMD 29k support
4497
4498A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4499specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4500calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4501usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4502in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4503
4504We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4505Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4506of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4507resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4508
4509 * Remote interfaces
4510
4511We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4512with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4513message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4514This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4515needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4516breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4517each instruction being stepped through.
4518
4519The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4520registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4521
4522There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4523find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4524Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4525processor with a serial port.
4526
4527 * Configuration
4528
4529Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4530`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4531supported, and what files each one uses.
4532
4533 * Library changes
4534
4535There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4536disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4537Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4538disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4539
4540The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4541Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4542can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4543grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4544
4545 * Documentation
4546
4547The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4548reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4549as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4550encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4551system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4552bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4553
4554And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4555
4556
4557*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4558
4559 * Better support for C++ function names
4560
4561GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4562names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4563(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4564single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4565Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4566
4567GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4568the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4569You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4570lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4571for the list of formats.
4572
4573 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4574
4575Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4576C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4577directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4578can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4579usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4580about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4581this problem.)
4582
4583 * New 'maintenance' command
4584
4585All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4586the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4587can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4588
4589 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4590 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4591 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4592 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4593 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4594 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4595
4596The following commands are new:
4597
4598 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4599 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4600 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4601
4602 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4603
4604We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4605(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4606be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4607read after argv processing.
4608
4609 * New hosts supported
4610
4611Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4612
55241689 4613GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4614
4615We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4616is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4617for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4618masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4619fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4620It costs extra.
4621
4622 * New targets supported
4623
4624Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4625
4626 * More smarts about finding #include files
4627
4628GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4629all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4630greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4631especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4632the one that contains your sources.
4633
4634We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4635breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4636try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4637
4638 * Interesting infernals change
4639
4640GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4641section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4642target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4643stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4644
4645 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4646
4647There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4648 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4649 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4650
4651See the ChangeLog for details.
4652
4653*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4654
4655 * New machines supported (host and target)
4656
4657IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4658
4659SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4660
4661 * New malloc package
4662
4663GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4664Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4665capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4666This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4667pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4668more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4669
4670 * info proc
4671
4672The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4673'help info proc' for details.
4674
4675 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4676
4677The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4678Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4679possible.
4680
4681 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4682
4683Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4684support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4685conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4686environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4687that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4688in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4689
4690 * Cross byte order fixes
4691
4692Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4693targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4694
4695 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4696
4697If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4698system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4699`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4700program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4701called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4702Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4703and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4704the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4705option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4706starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4707
4708You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4709the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4710information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4711slower, but makes future operations faster.
4712
4713The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4714build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4715A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4716use is:
4717
4718 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4719
4720The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4721It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4722shared across multiple host platforms.
4723
4724 * longjmp() handling
4725
4726GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4727siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4728all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4729platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4730
4731 * Solaris 2.0
4732
4733Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4734this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4735reading symbols.
4736
4737 * Bug fixes
4738
4739As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4740People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4741crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4742
4743*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4744
4745 * New machines supported (host and target)
4746
4747SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4748 (except core files)
4749BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4750Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4751
4752 * New machines supported (target)
4753
4754AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4755
4756 * C++ support
4757
4758GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4759The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4760per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4761
4762GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4763`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4764extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4765good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4766will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4767released.
4768
4769 * New features for SVR4
4770
4771GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4772shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4773only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4774
4775The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4776on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4777it prints the address mappings of the process.
4778
4779If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4780bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4781
4782 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4783
4784Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4785now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4786skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4787make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4788same code linked statically.
4789
4790 * New Getopt
4791
4792GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4793version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4794continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4795Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4796added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4797future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4798
4799 * Bugs fixed
4800
4801The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4802Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4803See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4804
4805
4806*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4807
4808 * New machines supported (host and target)
4809
4810Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4811NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4812Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4813
4814 * Almost SCO Unix support
4815
4816We had hoped to support:
4817SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4818(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4819that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4820about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4821
4822 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4823
4824GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4825debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4826is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4827send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4828reqired (if any).
4829
4830 * New Readline
4831
4832GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4833is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4834required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4835
4836 * Bugs fixed
4837
4838The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4839Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4840See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4841
4842 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4843
4844GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4845supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4846symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4847
4848Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4849mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4850debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4851mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4852version 2.
4853
4854Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4855really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4856line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4857variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4858situation somewhat.
4859
4860When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4861However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4862methods.
4863
4864We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4865DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4866encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4867
4868
4869*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4870
4871 * Improved configuration
4872
4873Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4874Porting BFD is simpler.
4875
4876 * Stepping improved
4877
4878The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4879of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4880in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4881function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4882
4883 * Bug fixing
4884
4885Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4886
4887 * New host supported (not target)
4888
4889Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4890
4891
4892*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4893
4894 * Multiple source language support
4895
4896GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4897It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4898and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4899language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4900You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4901`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4902
4903 * GDB and Modula-2
4904
4905GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4906currently under development at the State University of New York at
4907Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4908continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4909
4910Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4911debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4912symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4913
4914There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4915in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4916
4917 * set write on/off
4918
4919GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4920a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4921the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4922by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4923effect immediately.
4924
4925 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4926
4927When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4928shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4929The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4930examining core files.
4931
4932 * set listsize
4933
4934You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4935The default is 10.
4936
4937 * New machines supported (host and target)
4938
4939SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4940Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4941Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4942
4943 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4944
4945IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4946
4947 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4948
4949AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4950AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4951Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4952
4953 * New remote interfaces
4954
4955AMD 29000 Adapt
4956AMD 29000 Minimon
4957
4958
4959*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4960
4961 * New Facilities
4962
4963Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4964
4965Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4966target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4967is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4968remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4969remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4970also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4971using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4972stub on the target system.
4973
4974New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4975
4976GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4977library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4978object file types such as a.out and coff.
4979
4980There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4981refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4982
4983
4984 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4985
4986All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4987by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4988
4989For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4990``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4991Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4992
4993What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4994print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4995will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4996all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4997
4998confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4999 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5000 it is already running. Default is ON.
5001
5002editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5003 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5004 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5005 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5006 Default is ON.
5007
5008history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5009 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5010 or the value of the environment variable
5011 GDBHISTFILE.
5012
5013history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5014 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5015 HISTSIZE.
5016
5017history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5018 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5019 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5020
5021history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5022 history expansion will be performed on
5023 command line input. The default is OFF.
5024
5025radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5026 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5027 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5028
5029height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5030 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5031 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5032 variable TERM.
5033
5034width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5035 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5036 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5037 variable TERM.
5038
5039Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5040``set width'' instead.
5041
5042print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5043 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5044 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5045 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5046
5047print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5048 is OFF.
5049
5050print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5051 "raw" form if off.
5052
5053print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5054 like instructions.
5055
5056print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5057
5058
5059 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5060
5061The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5062new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5063are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5064window.
5065
5066
5067 * Support for Shared Libraries
5068
5069GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5070Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5071before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5072happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5073At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5074from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5075shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5076It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5077
5078sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5079 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5080 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5081
5082info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5083
5084
5085 * Watchpoints
5086
5087A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5088expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5089tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5090quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5091problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5092more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5093
5094watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5095
5096info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5097
5098delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5099disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5100enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5101
5102
5103 * C++ multiple inheritance
5104
5105When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5106for C++ programs.
5107
5108 * C++ exception handling
5109
5110Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5111ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5112the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5113handler's context).
5114
5115catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5116 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5117 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5118
5119info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5120 current stack frame.
5121
5122
5123 * Minor command changes
5124
5125The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5126command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5127is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5128
5129The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5130at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5131frames without printing.
5132
5133 * New directory command
5134
5135'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5136The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5137about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5138with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5139find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5140
5141 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5142
5143For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5144for more details.
5145
5146GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5147two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5148Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5149where the program that you are debugging will run.