1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.0:
6 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
8 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
9 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
10 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
12 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
14 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
16 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
17 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
20 * GDB supports logging output to a file
22 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
23 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
25 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
27 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
28 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
31 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
33 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
34 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
38 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
39 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
40 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
41 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
42 data, for more informative profiling results.
44 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
46 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
47 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
48 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
50 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
53 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
54 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
55 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
56 in a subsequent -var-update.
58 * New native configurations.
60 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
62 * Multi-arched targets.
64 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
65 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
67 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
69 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
70 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
71 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
74 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
75 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
76 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
77 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
78 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
79 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
80 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
81 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
82 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
83 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
84 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
85 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
87 * REMOVED configurations and files
90 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
91 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
92 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
93 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
94 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
95 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
97 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
98 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
99 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
100 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
101 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
102 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
104 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
106 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
107 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
108 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
109 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
110 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
112 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
114 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
116 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
117 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
118 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
119 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
120 shared libs like mad''.
122 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
124 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
125 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
126 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
127 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
129 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
131 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
132 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
135 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
136 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
138 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
139 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
141 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
142 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
143 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
144 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
146 * Multi-arched targets.
148 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
149 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
151 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
152 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
153 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
157 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
160 * New native configurations
162 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
163 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
164 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
165 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
167 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
169 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
170 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
171 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
174 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
175 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
176 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
177 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
178 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
179 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
180 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
181 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
182 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
183 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
185 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
186 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
190 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
192 * REMOVED configurations and files
194 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
195 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
196 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
197 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
198 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
200 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
202 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
204 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
205 commands. The default is 1024.
207 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
209 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
211 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
213 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
214 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
215 from a file into memory (restore).
217 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
219 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
220 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
221 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
223 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
231 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
232 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
233 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
235 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
236 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
237 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
239 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
240 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
241 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
243 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
244 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
245 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
247 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
249 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
251 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
252 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
253 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
254 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
255 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
256 (notably embedded) targets.
258 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
260 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
261 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
262 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
263 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
265 * New command line option
267 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
269 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
271 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
272 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
273 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
274 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
275 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
276 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
277 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
278 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
279 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
280 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
282 * Changes in ARM configurations.
284 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
285 configuration is fully multi-arch.
287 * New native configurations
289 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
290 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
291 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
292 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
296 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
298 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
300 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
301 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
302 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
305 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
306 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
307 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
308 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
309 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
311 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
313 * REMOVED configurations and files
315 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
317 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
318 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
319 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
320 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
321 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
322 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
323 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
324 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
325 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
326 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
327 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
329 * Changes to command line processing
331 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
332 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
334 * Changes to key bindings
336 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
338 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
340 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
342 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
345 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
347 Numerous documentation fixes.
349 Numerous testsuite fixes.
351 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
353 * New native configurations
355 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
356 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
357 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
358 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
360 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
364 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
366 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
368 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
370 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
371 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
372 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
373 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
374 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
376 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
377 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
378 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
379 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
380 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
381 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
382 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
383 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
385 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
386 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
388 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
389 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
390 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
393 * REMOVED configurations and files
395 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
396 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
398 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
402 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
404 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
405 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
410 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
412 * The MI enabled by default.
414 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
415 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
416 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
417 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
418 which is now deprecated.
420 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
422 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
423 main features are supported:
425 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
427 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
430 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
432 - a Pascal expression parser.
434 However, some important features are not yet supported.
436 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
438 - there are some problems with boolean types;
440 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
441 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
443 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
445 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
447 * Changes in completion.
449 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
450 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
451 users expect at the shell prompt.
453 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
454 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
455 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
456 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
457 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
458 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
459 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
461 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
463 * New platform-independent commands:
465 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
466 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
467 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
469 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
471 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
472 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
473 many threads as your system allows you to have.
475 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
477 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
478 multi-threaded programs though.
480 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
482 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
484 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
485 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
488 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
490 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
491 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
492 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
493 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
494 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
497 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
498 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
499 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
501 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
503 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
504 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
506 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
507 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
510 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
511 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
512 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
513 a given linear address.
515 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
516 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
517 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
519 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
521 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
523 * Changes in documentation.
525 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
526 Documentation License.
528 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
531 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
533 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
536 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
537 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
538 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
540 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
542 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
543 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
544 contents of this file.
548 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
550 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
552 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
554 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
555 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
556 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
557 greater level of detail.
559 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
561 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
562 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
563 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
566 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
568 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
569 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
570 machines ``out of the box''.
572 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
573 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
574 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
575 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
576 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
578 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
579 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
580 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
581 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
582 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
584 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
585 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
588 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
591 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
592 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
593 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
594 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
596 * New native configurations
598 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
599 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
603 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
604 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
605 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
606 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
608 * OBSOLETE configurations
610 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
611 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
613 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
616 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
617 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
618 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
619 be permanently REMOVED.
621 * Gould support removed
623 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
625 * New features for SVR4
627 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
628 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
629 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
631 * Many C++ enhancements
633 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
634 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
636 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
638 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
639 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
640 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
641 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
643 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
644 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
646 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
648 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
649 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
650 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
652 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
653 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
655 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
657 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
658 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
659 include ``set remote P-packet''.
661 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
663 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
664 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
665 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
667 * ``apropos'' command added.
669 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
670 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
671 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
675 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
676 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
677 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
678 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
679 enabled by configuring with:
681 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
683 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
685 * New native configurations
687 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
688 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
689 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
693 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
694 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
695 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
697 * OBSOLETE configurations
699 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
701 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
702 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
703 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
704 be permanently REMOVED.
708 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
709 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
710 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
711 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
712 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
713 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
714 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
719 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
721 * set extension-language
723 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
724 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
725 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
726 set extension-language .c c++
727 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
728 and their associated languages.
730 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
732 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
733 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
734 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
738 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
739 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
741 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
742 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
744 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
745 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
746 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
747 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
748 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
749 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
750 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
751 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
753 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
754 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
755 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
756 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
760 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
761 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
762 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
763 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
764 for xdb and dbx commands.
768 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
769 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
770 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
772 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
773 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
774 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
776 * Debugging across forks
778 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
783 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
784 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
785 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
787 * GDB remote protocol additions
789 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
790 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
791 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
792 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
794 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
795 full 64-bit address. The command
797 set remoteaddresssize 32
799 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
800 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
803 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
804 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
806 maint packet heythere
808 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
809 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
812 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
813 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
814 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
816 * Tracing can collect general expressions
818 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
819 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
820 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
822 * mask-address variable for Mips
824 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
825 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
826 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
828 * Higher serial baud rates
830 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
831 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
832 to achieve all of these rates.)
836 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
837 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
840 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
842 * New native configurations
844 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
845 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
846 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
847 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
848 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
849 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
850 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
854 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
855 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
856 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
857 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
858 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
859 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
860 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
861 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
862 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
863 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
864 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
866 * New debugging protocols
868 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
869 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
870 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
871 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
872 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
873 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
877 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
878 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
883 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
884 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
886 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
888 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
889 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
890 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
892 * Live range splitting
894 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
895 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
896 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
900 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
901 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
905 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
906 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
907 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
912 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
917 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
918 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
919 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
920 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
921 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
922 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
926 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
927 the symbol at the specified address.
931 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
932 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
933 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
934 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
935 file tracepoint.c for more details.
939 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
940 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
941 of most MIPS variants.
945 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
946 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
947 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
951 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
952 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
953 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
954 the possible architectures.
956 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
958 * New native configurations
960 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
961 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
962 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
963 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
964 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
965 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
969 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
970 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
971 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
972 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
973 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
975 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
979 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
980 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
981 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
982 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
983 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
987 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
989 * Windows 95/NT native
991 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
992 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
993 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
994 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
995 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
997 * dont-repeat command
999 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1000 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1001 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1002 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1004 * Send break instead of ^C
1006 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1007 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1008 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1010 * Remote protocol timeout
1012 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1013 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1014 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1016 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1018 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1019 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1020 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1021 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1022 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1024 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1025 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1026 automatically on hpux10.
1028 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1030 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1032 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1034 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1035 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1036 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1037 every character. The default value is 1050.
1039 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1041 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1042 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1043 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1044 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1045 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1046 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1048 * Speedups for remote debugging
1050 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1051 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1052 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1054 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1056 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1057 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1059 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1061 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1063 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1064 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1066 * Remote targets use caching
1068 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1069 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1070 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1071 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1072 off' turns the the data cache off.
1074 * Remote targets may have threads
1076 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1077 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1078 gdb/remote.c for details.
1082 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1083 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1084 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1085 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1086 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1087 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1088 sequence is something like
1090 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1092 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1096 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1097 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1098 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1099 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1100 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1101 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1102 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1103 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1107 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1108 but does simplify configuration and building.
1112 GDB now supports hpux10.
1114 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1116 * New native configurations
1118 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1119 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1120 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1121 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1125 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1126 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1127 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1128 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1131 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1133 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1134 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1135 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1136 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1137 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1139 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1141 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1142 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1145 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1147 To execute the command use:
1150 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1151 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1152 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1154 * New `if' and `while' commands
1156 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1157 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1158 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1159 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1160 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1161 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1162 if the expression is zero.
1164 * Fortran source language mode
1166 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1167 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1168 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1169 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1172 * Better HPUX support
1174 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1175 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1176 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1177 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1178 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1184 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1185 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1191 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1192 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1195 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1196 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1198 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1200 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1201 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1202 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1203 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1204 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1205 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1207 * New DOS host serial code
1209 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1210 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1213 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1215 * New "complete" command
1217 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1218 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1220 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1222 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1223 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1225 * Breakpoint hit counts
1227 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1228 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1229 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1230 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1231 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1234 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1236 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1237 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1238 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1240 * Shared library breakpoints
1242 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1243 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1245 * Hardware watchpoints
1247 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1248 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1250 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1254 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1255 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1257 * Improved Irix 5 support
1259 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1261 * Improved HPPA support
1263 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1265 * New native configurations
1267 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1268 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1269 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1270 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1274 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1275 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1278 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1280 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1281 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1285 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1286 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1288 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1290 * Irix 5 is now supported
1294 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1295 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1296 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1297 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1298 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1301 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1303 * User visible changes:
1307 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1308 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1309 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1310 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1311 debugging info for the mips target).
1313 * DEC Alpha native support
1315 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1316 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1317 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1318 Alpha-specific notes.
1320 * Preliminary thread implementation
1322 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1324 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1326 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1327 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1330 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1332 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1333 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1334 call methods, ...etc.
1336 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1338 * User visible changes:
1340 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1341 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1342 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1343 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1345 Filename completion now works.
1347 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1348 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1349 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1351 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1352 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1353 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1354 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1355 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1359 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1360 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1363 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1367 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1368 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1369 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1373 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1374 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1375 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1376 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1377 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1381 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1382 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1383 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1385 * New targets supported
1387 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1388 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1389 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1390 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1391 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1393 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1394 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1395 GO32 memory extender.
1397 * New remote protocols
1399 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1401 * New source languages supported
1403 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1404 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1405 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1408 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1410 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1412 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1413 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1414 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1415 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1416 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1417 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1419 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1421 * Faster and better demangling
1423 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1424 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1425 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1426 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1427 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1428 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1431 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1432 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1433 compiler does not actually implement.
1435 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1437 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1438 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1439 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1440 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1441 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1442 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1445 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1446 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1448 * Improved configure script
1450 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1451 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1452 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1453 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1455 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1456 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1457 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1458 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1459 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1460 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1462 * Documentation improvements
1464 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1465 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1466 before submitting changes.
1468 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1469 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1470 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1471 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1472 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1474 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1475 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1476 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1477 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1478 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1479 around this problem.
1483 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1484 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1485 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1488 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1489 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1491 * New native hosts supported
1493 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1494 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1496 * New targets supported
1498 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1500 * New file formats supported
1502 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1503 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1507 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1509 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1510 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1512 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1513 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1514 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1516 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1517 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1519 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1520 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1521 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1524 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1525 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1526 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1527 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1528 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1530 * Internal improvements
1532 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1533 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1535 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1536 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1537 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1538 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1539 shared code that handles any of them.
1541 * New command line options
1543 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1547 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1548 General Public License.
1550 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1552 * Host/native/target split
1554 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1555 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1556 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1557 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1558 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1560 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1561 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1562 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1563 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1564 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1565 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1566 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1568 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1569 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1570 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1572 * New hosts supported
1574 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1575 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1576 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1578 * New targets supported
1580 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1581 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1583 * New native hosts supported
1585 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1586 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1587 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1589 * New file formats supported
1591 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1592 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1593 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1597 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1598 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1599 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1601 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1603 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1604 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1605 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1606 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1610 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1611 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1612 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1614 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1618 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1619 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1622 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1623 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1625 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1626 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1627 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1628 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1629 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1630 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1632 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1633 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1634 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1635 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1639 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1640 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1641 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1642 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1643 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1645 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1646 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1647 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1648 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1652 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1653 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1654 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1655 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1656 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1657 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1658 each instruction being stepped through.
1660 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1661 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1663 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1664 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1665 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1666 processor with a serial port.
1670 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1671 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1672 supported, and what files each one uses.
1676 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1677 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1678 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1679 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1681 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1682 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1683 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1684 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1688 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1689 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1690 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1691 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1692 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1693 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1695 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1698 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1700 * Better support for C++ function names
1702 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1703 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1704 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1705 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1706 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1708 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1709 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1710 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1711 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1712 for the list of formats.
1714 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1716 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1717 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1718 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1719 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1720 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1721 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1724 * New 'maintenance' command
1726 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1727 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1728 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1730 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1731 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1732 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1733 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1734 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1735 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1737 The following commands are new:
1739 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1740 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1741 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1743 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1745 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1746 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1747 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1748 read after argv processing.
1750 * New hosts supported
1752 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1754 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1756 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1757 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1758 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1759 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1760 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1763 * New targets supported
1765 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1767 * More smarts about finding #include files
1769 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1770 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1771 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1772 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1773 the one that contains your sources.
1775 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1776 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1777 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1779 * Interesting infernals change
1781 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1782 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1783 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1784 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1786 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1788 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1789 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1790 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1792 See the ChangeLog for details.
1794 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1796 * New machines supported (host and target)
1798 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1800 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1802 * New malloc package
1804 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1805 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1806 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1807 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1808 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1809 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1813 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1814 'help info proc' for details.
1816 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1818 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1819 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1822 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1824 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1825 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1826 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1827 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1828 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1829 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1831 * Cross byte order fixes
1833 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1834 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1836 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1838 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1839 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1840 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1841 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1842 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1843 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1844 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1845 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1846 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1847 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1849 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1850 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1851 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1852 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1854 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1855 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1856 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1859 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1861 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1862 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1863 shared across multiple host platforms.
1865 * longjmp() handling
1867 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1868 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1869 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1870 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1874 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1875 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1880 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1881 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1882 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1884 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1886 * New machines supported (host and target)
1888 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1890 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1891 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1893 * New machines supported (target)
1895 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1899 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1900 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1901 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1903 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1904 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1905 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1906 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1907 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1910 * New features for SVR4
1912 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1913 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1914 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1916 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1917 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1918 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1920 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1921 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1923 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1925 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1926 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1927 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1928 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1929 same code linked statically.
1933 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1934 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1935 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1936 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1937 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1938 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1942 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1943 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1944 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1947 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1949 * New machines supported (host and target)
1951 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1952 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1953 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1955 * Almost SCO Unix support
1957 We had hoped to support:
1958 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1959 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1960 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1961 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1963 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1965 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1966 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1967 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1968 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1973 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1974 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1975 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1979 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1980 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1981 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1983 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1985 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1986 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1987 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1989 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1990 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1991 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1992 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1995 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1996 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1997 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1998 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2001 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2002 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2005 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2006 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2007 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2010 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2012 * Improved configuration
2014 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2015 Porting BFD is simpler.
2019 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2020 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2021 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2022 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2026 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2028 * New host supported (not target)
2030 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2033 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2035 * Multiple source language support
2037 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2038 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2039 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2040 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2041 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2042 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2046 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2047 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2048 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2049 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2051 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2052 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2053 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2055 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2056 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2060 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2061 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2062 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2063 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2066 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2068 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2069 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2070 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2071 examining core files.
2075 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2078 * New machines supported (host and target)
2080 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2081 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2082 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2084 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2086 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2088 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2090 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2091 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2092 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2094 * New remote interfaces
2100 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2104 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2106 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2107 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2108 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2109 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2110 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2111 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2112 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2113 stub on the target system.
2115 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2117 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2118 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2119 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2121 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2122 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2125 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2127 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2128 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2130 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2131 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2132 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2134 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2135 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2136 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2137 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2139 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2140 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2141 it is already running. Default is ON.
2143 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2144 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2145 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2146 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2149 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2150 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2151 or the value of the environment variable
2154 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2155 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2158 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2159 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2160 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2162 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2163 history expansion will be performed on
2164 command line input. The default is OFF.
2166 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2167 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2168 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2170 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2171 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2172 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2175 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2176 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2177 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2180 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2181 ``set width'' instead.
2183 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2184 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2185 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2186 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2188 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2191 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2194 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2197 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2200 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2202 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2203 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2204 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2208 * Support for Shared Libraries
2210 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2211 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2212 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2213 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2214 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2215 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2216 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2217 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2219 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2220 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2221 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2223 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2228 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2229 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2230 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2231 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2232 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2233 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2235 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2237 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2239 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2240 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2241 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2244 * C++ multiple inheritance
2246 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2249 * C++ exception handling
2251 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2252 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2253 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2256 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2257 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2258 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2260 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2261 current stack frame.
2264 * Minor command changes
2266 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2267 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2268 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2270 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2271 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2272 frames without printing.
2274 * New directory command
2276 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2277 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2278 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2279 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2280 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2282 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2284 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2287 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2288 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2289 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2290 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / thirdparty / binutils-gdb.git / blob